MARK  TWAIN 


MARK    TWAIN 


BY 


ARCHIBALD   HENDERSON 


WITH  PHOTOGRAPHS  BY 

ALVIN  LANGDON  GOBURN 


NEW  YORK 

FREDERICK  A.  STOKES  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


PRINTED    BY 

TURNBULL   AND   SPEARS, 
EDINBURGH 


TO 

G.  ALPHONSO  SMITH 

SCHOLAR,  GOOD  FELLOW.  FRIEND 


52521)0 


Haply — who  knows  ? — somewhere 

In  Avalon,  Isle  of  Dreams, 

In  vast  contentment  at  last, 

With  every  grief  done  away, 

While  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare  wait, 

And  Moliere  hangs  on  his  words, 

And  Cervantes  not  far  off 

Listens  and  smiles  apart, 

With  that  incomparable  drawl 

He  is  jesting  with  Dagonet  now." 

BLISS  CARMAN. 


PREFACE 

THERE  are  to-day,  all  over  the  world,  men  and 
women  and  children  who  owe  a  debt  of  almost 
personal  gratitude  to  Mark  Twain  for  the  joy  of  his 
humour  and  the  charm  of  his  personality.  In  the 
future  they  will,  I  doubt  not,  seek  and  welcome 
opportunities  to  acknowledge  that  debt.  My  own 
experience  with  the  works  of  Mark  Twain  is  in  no 
sense  exceptional.  From  the  days  of  early  childhood, 
my  feeling  for  Mark  Twain,  derived  first  solely  from 
acquaintance  with  his  works,  was  a  feeling  of  warm 
and,  as  it  were,  personal  affection.  With  limitless 
interest  and  curiosity,  I  used  to  hear  the  Uncle 
Remus  stories  from  the  lips  of  one  of  our  old  family 
servants,  a  negro  to  whom  I  was  devotedly  attached. 
These  stories  were  narrated  to  me  in  the  negro 
dialect  with  such  perfect  naturalness  and  racial 
gusto  that  I  often  secretly  wondered  if  the  narrator 


ix 


x  MARK  TWAIN 

were  not  Uncle  Remus  himself  in  disguise.  I  was 
thus  cunningly  prepared,  "  coached  "  shall  I  say, 
for  the  maturer  charms  of  Tom  Sawyer  and  Huckle 
berry  Finn.  With  Uncle  Remus  and  Mark  Twain 
as  my  preceptors,  I  spent  the  days  of  my  youth 
— excitedly  alternating,  spell-bound,  between  the 
inexhaustible  attractions  of  Tom,  Huck,  Jim,  Indian 
Joe,  the  Duke  and  the  Dauphin,  and  their  compeers 
on  the  one  hand ;  and  Brer  Rabbit,  Sis  Cow,  and  a 
thousand  other  fantastic,  but  very  real  creatures 
of  the  animal  kingdom  on  the  other. 

I  felt  a  strange  sort  of  camaraderie,  of  personal 
attachment,  for  Mark  Twain  during  all  the  years 
before  I  came  into  personal  contact  with  him.  It 
was  the  dictum  of  a  distinguished  English  critic,  to 
the  effect  that  Huckleberry  Finn  was  a  literary 
masterpiece,  which  first  awoke  in  me,  then  a  mere 
boy,  a  genuine  respect  for  literary  criticism ;  for 
here  was  expressed  an  opinion  which  /  had  long 
secretly  cherished,  but  somehow  never  dared  to 
utter  ! 

My  personal  association  with  Mr.  Clemens,  com 
paratively  brief  though  it  was — an  ocean  voyage, 


PREFACE  xi 

meetings  here  and  there,  a  brief  stay  as  a  guest  in 
his  home — gave  me  at  last  the  justification  for 
paying  the  debt  which,  with  the  years,  had  grown 
greater  and  more  insistently  obligatory.  I  felt 
both  relief  and  pleasure  when  he  authorized  me 
to  pay  that  debt  by  writing  an  interpretation  of 
his  life  and  work. 

It  is  an  appreciation  originating  in  the  heart  of 
one  who  loved  Mark  Twain's  works  for  a  generation 
before  he  ever  met  Samuel  L.  Clemens.  It  is  an 
interpretation  springing  from  the  conviction  that 
Mark  Twain  was  a  great  American  who  compre 
hensively  incorporated  and  realized  his  own  country 
and  his  own  age  as  no  American  has  so  completely 
done  before  him ;  a  supreme  humorist  who  ever 
wore  the  panache  of  youth,  gaiety,  and  bonhomie ; 
a  brilliant  wit  who  never  dipped  his  darts  in  the 
poison  of  cynicism,  misanthropy,  or  despair ;  con 
stitutionally  a  reformer  who,  heedless  of  self,  boldly 
struck  for  the  right  as  he  saw  it ;  a  philosopher 
and  sociologist  who  intuitively  understood  the  secret 
springs  of  human  motive  and  impulse,  and  em 
pirically  demonstrated  that  intuition  in  works 


xii  MARK  TWAIN 

which  crossed  frontiers,  survived  translation,  and 
went  straight  to  the  human,  beneath  the  disguise 
of  the  racial ;  a  genius  who  lived  to  know  and  enjoy 
the  happy  rewards  of  his  own  fame ;  a  great  man 
who  saw  life  steadily  and  saw  it  whole. 


ARCHIBALD  HENDERSON. 


LONDON, 
August  5,  1910. 


NOTE. — The  author  esteems  himself  in  the  highest  degree 
fortunate  in  having  the  co-operation  of  Mr.  Alvin  Langdon 
Coburn.  All  the  illustrations,  both  autochrome  and  mono 
chrome,  are  the  work  of  Mr.  Coburn. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


PREFACE   .....         ix 

I.  INTRODUCTORY      ....  1 

II.  THE  MAN  .  .  .  .13 

III.  THE  HUMORIST      .  .  .  .67 

IV.  THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          .  .       127 
V.  PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST      .       177 

APPENDIX  :  BIBLIOGRAPHY  213 


xiii 


I.  INTRODUCTORY 


"  I've  a  theory  that  every  author,  while  living,  has  a  pro 
jection  of  himself,  a  sort  of  eidolon,  that  goes  about  in  near 
and  distant  places,  and  makes  friends  and  enemies  for  him  out 
of  folk  who  never  knew  him  in  the  flesh.  When  the  author 
dies,  this  phantom  fades  away,  not  caring  to  continue  business 
at  the  old  stand.  Then  the  dead  writer  lives  only  in  the 
impression  made  by  his  literature ;  this  impression  may  grow 
sharper  or  fainter  according  to  the  fashions  and  new  conditions 
of  the  time." 

Letter  oj  THOMAS  BAILEY  ALDRICH  to  WILLIAM 
DEAN  HOWELLS  of  date  December  23,  1901. 


INTRODUCTORY 

IN  the  past,  the  attitude  of  the  average  American 
toward  Mark  Twain  has  been  most  characteristically 
expressed  in  a  sort  of  complacent  and  chuckling 
satisfaction.  There  was  pride  in  the  thought  that 
America,  the  colossal,  had  produced  a  superman 
of  humour.  The  national  vanity  was  touched  when 
the  nations  of  the  world  rocked  and  roared  with 
laughter  over  the  comically  primitive  barbarisms  of 
the  funny  man  from  the  "  Wild  and  Woolly  West." 
Mark  Twain  was  lightly  accepted  as  an  international 
comedian  magically  evoking  the  laughter  of  a  world. 
It  would  be  a  mis-statement  to  affirm  that  the 
works  of  Mark  Twain  were  reckoned  as  falling 
within  the  charmed  circle  of  "  Literature."  They 
were  not  reckoned  in  connexion  with  literature 
at  all. 

The  fingers  of  one  hand  number  those  who  real 
ized  in  Mark  Twain  one  of  the  supreme  geniuses  of 
our  age.  Even  in  the  event  of  his  death,  when 
the  flood-gates  of  critical  chatter  have  been  thrown 


4  MARK  TWAIN 

emptily  wide,  there  is  room  for  grave  doubt  whether 
a  realization  of  the  unique  and  incomparable 
position  of  Mark  Twain  in  the  republic  of  letters 
has  fully  dawned  upon  the  American  consciousness. 
The  literatures  of  England  and  Europe  do  not  posit 
an  aesthetic,  embracing  work  of  such  primitive 
crudity  and  apparently  unstudied  frankness  as 
the  work  of  Mark  Twain.  It  is  for  American 
criticism  to  posit  this  more  comprehensive  aesthetic, 
and  to  demonstrate  that  the  work  of  Mark  Twain 
is  the  work  of  a  great  artist.  It  would  be  absurd 
to  maintain  that  Mark  Twain's  appeal  to  posterity 
depends  upon  the  dicta  of  literary  criticism.  It 
would  be  absurd  to  deny  that  upon  America 
rests  the  task  of  demonstrating,  to  a  world  willing 
enough  to  be  convinced,  that  Mark  Twain  is  one 
of  the  supreme  and  imperishable  glories  of  American 
literature. 

At  any  given  moment  in  history,  the  number  of 
living  writers  to  whom  can  be  attributed  what  a 
Frenchman  would  call  mondial  eclat  is  surprisingly 
few.  It  was  not  so  many  years  ago  that  Rudyard 
Kipling,  with  vigorous,  imperialistic  note,  won  for 
himself  the  unquestioned  title  of  militant  spokesman 
for  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  That  fame  has  suffered 
eclipse  in  the  passage  of  time.  To-day,  Bernard 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

Shaw  has  a  fame  more  world-wide  than  that  of  any 
other  literary  figure  in  the  British  Isles.  His  dramas 
are  played  from  Madrid  to  Helsingfors,  from  Buda- 
Pesth  to  Stockholm,  from  Vienna  to  St  Petersburg, 
from  Berlin  to  Buenos  Ayres.  Recently  Zola, 
Ibsen,  and  Tolstoy  constituted  the  literary  hierarchy 
of  the  world — according  to  popular  verdict.  Since 
Zola  and  Ibsen  have  passed  from  the  scene,  Tolstoy 
exerts  unchallenged  the  profoundest  influence  upon 
the  thought  and  consciousness  of  the  world.  This 
is  an  influence  streaming  less  from  his  works  than 
from  his  life,  less  from  his  intellect  than  from  his 
conscience.  The  literati  bemoan  the  artist  of  an 
epoch  prior  to  What  is  Art*?  The  whole  world  pays 
tribute  to  the  passionate  integrity  of  Tolstoy's 
moral  aspiration.* 

Until  yesterday,  Mark  Twain  vied  with  Tolstoy  for 
the  place  of  most  widely  read  and  most  genuinely 
popular  author  in  the  world.  In  a  sense  not  easily 
misunderstood,  Mark  Twain  has  a  place  in  the 
minds  and  hearts  of  the  great  mass  of  humanity 
throughout  the  civilized  world,  which,  if  measured 
in  terms  of  affection,  sympathy,  and  spontaneous 
enjoyment,  is  without  a  parallel.  The  robust 

*  While  this  book  was  going  through  the  press,  news  has  come  of 
the  death  of  Tolstoy. 


6  MARK  TWAIN 

nationalism  of  Kipling  challenges  the  defiant  opposi 
tion  of  foreigners ;  whilst  his  reportorial  realism 
offends  many  an  inviolable  canon  of  European 
taste.  With  all  his  incandescent  wit  and  comic 
irony,  Bernard  Shaw  makes  his  most  vivid  impression 
upon  the  upper  strata  of  society ;  his  legendary 
character,  moreover,  is  perpetually  standing  in  the 
light  of  the  serious  reformer.  Tolstoy's  works  are 
Russia's  greatest  literary  contribution  to  posterity ; 
and  yet  his  literary  fame  has  suffered  through  his 
extravagant  ideals,  the  magnificent  futility  of  his 
inconsistency,  and  the  almost  maniacal  mysticism 
of  his  unrealizable  hopes. 

If  Mark  Twain  makes  a  more  deeply,  more 
comprehensively  popular  appeal,  it  is  doubtless 
because  he  makes  use  of  the  universal  solvent 
of  humoufc.  That  eidolon  of  which  Aldrich  speaks 
— a  compact  of  good  humour,  robust  sanity,  and 
r^  large-minded  humanity — has  diligently  "  gone  about 

in  near  and  distant  places,"  everywhere  making 
?  *5  /9*/  warm  and  lifelong  friends  of  folk  of  all  nation 
alities  who  have  never  known  Mark  Twain  in 
the  flesh.  The  French  have  a  way  of  speaking 
of  an  author's  public  as  if  it  were  a  select  and 
limited  segment  of  the  conglomerate  of  readers ; 
and  in  a  country  like  France,  with  its  innumerable 


INTRODUCTORY  7 

literary  cliques  and  sects,  there  is  some  reason  for 
the  phraseology.  In  reality,  the  author  appeals  to 
many  different  "  publics  "  or  classes  of  readers — 
in  proportion  to  the  many-sidedness  of  the  reader's 
human  interests  and  the  catholicity  of  his  tastes. 
Mark  Twain  first  opens  the  eyes  of  many  a  boy  to 
the  power  of  the  great  human  book,  warm  with  the 
actuality  of  experience  and  the  life-blood  of  the  heart. 
By  humorous  inversion,  he  points  the  sound  moral 
and  vivifies  the  right  principle  for  the  youth  to 
whom  the  dawning  consciousness  of  morality  is  the 
first  real  psychological  discovery  of  life.  With  hearty 
laughter  at  the  stupid  irritations  of  self-conscious 
virtue,  with  ironic  scorn  for  the  frigid  Puritanism 
of  mechanical  morality,  Mark  Twain  enraptures 
that  innumerable  company  of  the  sophisticated 
who  have  chafed  under  the  omnipresent  influence 
of  a  "  good  example "  and  stilled  the  painless 
pangs  of  an  unruly  conscience.  With  splendid 
satire  for  the  base,  with  shrill  condemnation  for 
tyranny  and  oppression,  with  the  scorpion-lash  for 
the  equivocal,  the  fraudulent,  and  the  insincere, 
Mark  Twain  inspires  the  growing  body  of  reformers 
in  all  countries  who  would  remedy  the  ills  of  demo 
cratic  government  with  the  knife  of  publicity.  The 
wisdom  of  human  experience  and  of  sagacious 


8  MARK  TWAIN 

tolerance  informing  his  books  for  the  young,  provokes 
the  question  whether  these  books  are  not  more 
apposite  to  the  tastes  of  experienced  age  than  to  the 
fancies  of  callow  youth.  The  navvy  may  rejoice  in 
Life  on  the  Mississippi.  Youth  and  age  may  share 
without  jealousy  the  abounding  fun  and  primitive 
naturalness  of  Huckleberry  Finn.  True  lovers  of 
adventure  may  revel  in  the  masterly  narrative  of 
Tom  Sawyer.  The  artist  may  bestow  his  critical 
meed  of  approval  upon  the  beauty  of  Joan  of  Arc. 
The  moralist  may  heartily  validate  the  ethical 
lesson  of  The  Man  that  Corrupted  Hadleyburg.  Any 
one  may  pay  the  tribute  of  irresistible  explosions  of 
laughter  to  the  horse-play  of  Roughing  It,  the  colossal 
extravagance  of  The  Innocents  Abroad,  the  irreverence 
and  iconoclasm  of  that  Yankee  intruder  into  the 
hallowed  confines  of  Camelot.  All  may  rejoice  in 
the  spontaneity  and  refreshment  of  truth ;  spiritu 
ally  co-operate  in  forthright  condemnation  of  fraud, 
peculation,  and  sham ;  and  breathe  gladly  the  fresh 
and  bracing  air  of  sincerity,  sanity,  and  wisdom. 
The  stevedore  on  the  dock,  the  motor-man  on  the 
street  car,  the  newsboy  on  the  street,  the  river- 
man  on  the  Mississippi — all  speak  with  exuberant 
affection  in  memory  of  that  quaint  figure  in  his 
white  suit,  his  ruddy  face  shining  through  wreaths  of 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

tobacco  smoke  and  surmounted  by  a  great  halo  of 
silvery  hair.  In  one  day,  as  Mark  Twain  was  fond 
of  relating,  an  emperor  and  a  portier  vied  with 
each  other  in  tributes  of  admiration  and  esteem 
for  this  man  and  his  works.  It  is  Mark  Twain's 
imperishable  glory,  not  simply  that  his  name  is  the 
most  familiar  of  that  of  any  author  who  has  lived  in 
our  own  times,  but  that  it  is  remembered  with  infinite 
and  irrepressible  zest. 

"  We  think  of  Mark  Twain  not  as  other  celebrities, 
but  as  the  man  whom  we  knew  and  loved,"  said 
Dr._Vaii^Djke  in  his  Memorial  Address.  "  We  re 
member  the  realities  which  made  his  life  worth 
while,  the  strong  and  natural  manhood  that  was  in 
him,  the  depth  and  tenderness  of  his  affections,  his 
laughing  enmity  to  all  shams  and  pretences,  his  long 
and  faithful  witness  to  honesty  and  fair-dealing. 

"  Those  who  know  the  story  of  Mark  Twain's 
career  know  how  bravely  he  faced  hardships  and 
misfortune,  how  loyally  he  toiled  for  years  to  meet 
a  debt  of  conscience,  following  the  injunction  of  the 
New  Testament,  to  provide  not  only  things  honest, 
but  things  '  honourable  in  the  sight  of  all  men.' 

''  Those  who  know  the  story  of  his  friendships 
and  his  family  life  know  that  he  was  one  who  loved 
much  and  faithfully,  even  unto  the  end.  Those 


10  MARK  TWAIN 

who  know  his  work  as  a  whole  know  that  under 
the  lambent  and  irrepressible  humour  which  was 
his  gift,  there  was  a  foundation  of  serious  thoughts 
and  noble  affections  and  desires. 

"  Nothing  could  be  more  false  than  to  suppose 
that  the  presence  of  humour  means  the  absence 
of  depth  and  earnestness.  There  are  elements  of 
the  unreal,  the  absurd,  the  ridiculous  in  this  strange, 
incongruous  world  which  must  seem  humorous 
even  to  the  highest  mind.  Of  these  the  Bible 
says  :  '  He  that  sitteth  in  the  heavens  shall  laugh ; 
the  Almighty  shall  hold  them  in  derision.'  But 
the  mark  of  this  higher  humour  is  that  it_doesjiot 

}  laugh  at  the  weak,  the  helpless,  the  true,  the  innocent ; 

;  only  at  the  false,   the  pretentious,   the  vain,   the 

|  hypocritical. 

"  Mark  Twain  himself  would  be  the  first  to  smile 
at  the  claim  that  his  humour  was  infallible ;  but 
we  say  without  doubt  that  he  used  his  gift,  not 
for  evil,  but  for  good.  The  atmosphere  of  his  work 
is  clean  and  wholesome.  He  made  fun  without 
hatred.  He  laughed  many  of  the  world's  false 
claimants  out  of  court,  and  entangled  many  of  the 
world's  false  witnesses  in  the  net  of  ridicule.  In 
his  best  books  and  stories,  coloured  with  his  own 
experiences,  he  touched  the  absurdities  of  life  with 


INTRODUCTORY  11 

penetrating,  but  not  unkindly,  mockery,  and  made 
us  feel  somehow  the  infinite  pathos  of  life's  realities. 
No  one  can  say  that  he  ever  failed  to  reverence  the 
purity,  the  frank,  joyful,  genuine  nature  of  the 
little  children,  of  whom  Christ  said,  '  Of  such  is  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.' 

"  Now  he  is  gone,  and  our  thoughts  of  him  are 
tender,  grateful,  proud.  We  are  glad  of  his  friend 
ship  ;  glad  that  he  expressed  so  richly  one  of  the 
great  elements  in  the  temperament  of  America ; 
glad  that  he  has  left  such  an  honourable  record  as 
a  man  of  letters  ;  and  glad  also  for  his  own  sake 
that  after  many  and  deep  sorrows  he  is  at  peace 
and,  we  trust,  happy  in  the  fuller  light. 

" '  Rest  after  toil,  port  after  stormy  seas, 
Death  after  life  doth  greatly  please.'  " 


II.  THE  MAN 


" ( We  cannot  live  always  on  the  cold  heights  of  the  sublime 
— the  thin  air  stifles ' — I  have  forgotten  who  said  it.  We 
cannot  flush  always  with  the  high  ardour  of  the  signers  of 
the  Declaration,  nor  remain  at  the  level  of  the  address  at 
Getty sburg,  nor  cry  continually,  *  O  Beautiful  !  My  country  ! ' 
Yet,  in  the  long  dull  interspans  between  these  sacred  moments 
we  need  some  one  to  remind  us  that  we  are  a  nation.  For 
in  the  dead  vast  and  middle  of  the  years  insidious  foes  are 
lurking — anaemic  refinements,  cosmopolitan  decadencies,  the 
egotistic  and  usurping  pride  of  great  cities,  the  cold  sickening 
of  the  heart  at  the  reiterated  exposures  of  giant  fraud  and 
corruption.  When  our  countrymen  migrate  because  we  have 
no  kings  or  castles,  we  are  thankful  to  any  one  who  will  tell 
us  what  we  can  count  on.  When  they  complain  that  our 
soil  lacks  the  humanity  essential  to  great  literature,  we  are 
grateful  even  for  the  firing  of  a  national  joke  heard  round  the 
world.  And  when  Mark  Twain,  robust,  big-hearted,  gifted 
with  the  divine  power  to  use  words,  makes  us  all  laugh  together, 
builds  true  romances  with  prairie  fire  and  Western  clay,  and 
shows  us  that  we  are  at  one  on  all  the  main  points,  we  feel  that 
he  has  been  appointed  by  Providence  to  see  to  it  that  the 
precious  ordinary  self  of  the  Republic  shall  suffer  no  harm." 
STUART  P.  SHERMAN  :  "  MARK  TWAIN." 
The  Nation,  May  12,  1910. 


THE  MAN 

AMERICAN  literature,  indeed  I  might  say  American 
life,  can  exhibit  no  example  of  supreme  success  from 
the  humblest  beginnings,  so  signal  as  the  example 
of  Mark  Twain.  Lincoln  became  President  of  the 
United  States,  as  did  Grant  and  Johnson.  But 
assassination  began  for  Lincoln  an  apotheosis  which 
has  gone  to  deplorable  lengths  of  hero-worship  and 
adulation.  Grant  was  one  of  the  great  failures  in 
American  public  life ;  and  Johnson,  brilliant  but 
unstable,  narrowly  escaped  impeachment.  Mark 
Twain  enjoys  the  unique  distinction  of  exhibiting 
a  progressive  development,  a  deepening  and  broaden- 
ing__of  forces,  a  ripening  of  intellectual  and  spiritual 
powers  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  his  career. 
From  the  standpoint  of  the  man  of  letters,  the 
evolution  of  Mark  Twain  from  a  journeyman  printer 
to  a  great  author,  from  a  merry- andrew  to  a  world- 
humorist,  from  a  river-pilot  to  a  trustworthy  navi 
gator  on  the  vast  and  uncharted  seas  of  human 
experience,  may  be  taken  as  symbolic  of  the  romance  < 
of  American  life. 

15 


16  MARK  TWAIN 

With  a  sort  of  mock-pride,  Clemens  referred  at 
times  to  the  ancestral  glories  of  his  house — the  judge 
who  condemned  Charles  L,  and  all  those  other 
notables,  of  Dutch  and  English  breeds,  who  shed 
lustre  upon  the  name  of  Clemens.  Yet  he  claimed 
that  he  had  not  examined  into  these  traditions, 
chiefly  because  "  I  was  so  busy  polishing  up  this 
end  of  the  line  and  trying  to  make  it  showy."  His 
mother,  a  "  Lambton  with  a  p,"  of  Kentucky, 
married  John  Marshall  Clemens,  of  Virginia,  a 
man  of  determination  and  force,  in  Lexington,  in 
1823 ;  but  neither  was  endowed  with  means,  and 
their  life  was  of  the  simplest.  From  Jamestown, 
in  the  mountain  solitudes  of  East  Tennessee, 
they  removed  in  1829,  much  as  Judge  Hawkins  is 
said  to  have  done  in  The  Gilded  Age,  settling  at 
Florida,  Missouri.  Here  was  born,  on  November  30, 
1835,  a  few  months  after  their  arrival,  Samuel 
Langhorne  Clemens.  Long  afterwards  he  stated  that 
he  had  increased  by  one  per  cent,  the  population 
of  this  village  of  one  hundred  inhabitants,  thereby 
doing  more  than  the  best  man  in  history  had  ever 
done  for  any  other  town. 

Although  weak  and  sickly,  the  child  did  not 
suffer  from  the  hard  life,  and  survived  two  other 
children,  Margaret  and  Benjamin.  At  different  times 


THE  MAN  17 

his  life  was  in  danger,  the  local  doctor  always  coming 
to  the  rescue.  He  once  asked  his  mother,  after  she 
had  reached  old  age,  if  she  hadn't  been  uneasy  about 
him.  She  admitted  she  had  been  uneasy  about  him 
the  whole  time.  But  when  he  inquired  further  if 
she  was  afraid  he  would  not  live,  she  answered  after 
a  reflective  pause — as  if  thinking  out  the  facts — 
that  she  had  been  afraid  he  would  ! 

His  sister  Pamela  afterwards  became  the  mother 
of  Samuel  E.  Moffett,  the  writer;  and  his  brother 
Orion,  ten  years  his  senior,  afterwards  was  intimately 
associated  with  him  in  life  and  found  a  place  in  his 
writings. 

In  1839,  John  Marshall  Clemens  tired  of  the  un 
promising  life  of  Florida  and  removed  to  Hannibal, 
Missouri.  He  was  a  stern,  unbending  man,  a  lawyer 
by  profession,  a  merchant  by  vocation ;  after 
his  removal  to  Hannibal  he  became  a  Justice  of 
the  Peace,  an  office  he  filled  with  all  the  dignity 
of  a  local  autocrat.  His  forum  was  a  "  dingy  " 
office,  furnished  with  "  a  dry -goods  box,  three  or  four 
rude  stools,  and  a  puncheon  bench."  The  solemnity 
of  his  manner  in  administering  the  law  won  for  him, 
among  his  neighbours,  the  title  of  Judge. 

One  need  but  recall  the  scenes  in  which  Tom 
Sawyer  was  born  and  bred  to  realize  in  its  actuality 


18  MARK  TWAIN 

the  model  from  which  these  scenes  were  drawn. 
"  Sam  was  always  a  good-hearted  boy,"  his  mother 
once  remarked,  "  but  he  was  a  very  wild  and  mis 
chievous  one,  and,  do  what  we  would,  we  could 
never  make  him  go  to  school.  This  used  to  trouble 
his  father  and  me  dreadfully,  and  we  were  convinced 
that  he  would  never  amount  to  as  much  in  the  world 
as  his  brothers,  because  he  was  not  near  so  steady 
and  sober-minded  as  they  were."  At  school,  he 
"  excelled  only  in  spelling  "  ;  outside  of  school  he 
was  the  prototype  of  his  own  Huckleberry  Finn, 
mischievous  and  prankish,  playing  truant  when 
ever  the  opportunity  afforded.  "  Often  his  father 
would  start  him  off  to  school,"  his  mother  once 
said,  "  and  in  a  little  while  would  follow  him  to 
ascertain  his  whereabouts.  There  was  a  large  stump 
on  the  way  to  the  schoolhouse,  and  Sam  would 
take  his  position  behind  that,  and  as  his  father 
went  past  would  gradually  circle  around  it  in  such 
a  way  as  to  keep  out  of  sight.  Finally,  his  father 
and  the  teacher  both  said  it  was  of  no  use  to  try  to 
teach  Sam  anything,  because  he  was  determined 
not  to  learn.  But  I  never  gave  up.  He  was  always 
a  great  boy  for  history,  and  could  never  get  tired 
of  that  kind  of  reading ;  but  he  hadn't  any  use  for 
schoolhouses  and  text  books." 


THE  MAN  19 

Mr.  Howells  has  aptly  described  Hannibal  as  a 
"  loafing,  out-at-elbows,  down-at-the-heels,  slave- 
holding  Mississippi  river  town."  Young  Clemens 
accepted  the  institution  of  slavery  as  a  matter  of 
course,  for  his  father  was  a  slave-owner;  and  his 
mother's  wedding  dowry  consisted  in  part  of  two 
or  three  slaves.  Judge  Clemens  was  a  very  austere 
man ;  like  so  many  other  slave-holders,  he  silently 
abhorred  slavery.  To  his  children,  especially  to 
Sam,  as  well  as  to  his  slaves,  he  was,  however,  a 
stern  taskmaster.  Mark  Twain  has  described  the 
terms  on  which  he  and  his  father  lived  as  a  sort  of 
armed  neutrality.  If  at  times  this  neutrality  was 
broken  and  suffering  ensued,  the  breaking  and  the 
suffering  were  always  divided  up  with  strict  im 
partiality  between  them — his  father  doing  the  break 
ing  and  he  the  suffering  !  Sam  claimed  to  be  a 
very  backward,  cautious,  unadventurous  boy.  But 
this  modest  estimate  is  subject  to  modification 
when  we  learn  that  once  he  jumped  off  a  two- 
story  stable ;  another  time  he  gave  an  elephant 
a  plug  of  tobacco,  and  retired  without  waiting  for 
an  answer ;  and  still  another  time  he  pretended 
to  be  talking  in  his  sleep,  and  got  off  a  portion 
of  every  original  conundrum  in  hearing  of  his 
father.  He  begs  the  curious  not  to  pry  into  the 


20  MARK  TWAIN 

result — as  it  was  of  no  consequence  to  any  one  but 
himself  ! 

The  cave,  so  graphically  described  in  Tom  Sawyer, 
was  one  of  Sam's  favourite  haunts  ;  and  his  first 
sweetheart  was  Laura  Hawkins,  the  Becky  Thatcher 
of  Tom's  admiration.  "  Sam  was  always  up  to  some 
mischief,"  this  lady  once  remarked  in  later  life, 
when  in  reminiscential  mood.  "  We  attended 
Sunday-school  together,  and  they  had  a  system  of 
rewards  for  saying  verses  after  committing  them  to 
memory.  A  blue  ticket  was  given  for  ten  verses, 
a  red  ticket  for  ten  blue,  a  yellow  for  ten  red,  and  a 
Bible  for  ten  yellow  tickets.  If  you  will  count  up, 
you  will  see  it  makes  a  Bible  for  ten  thousand  verses. 
Sam  came  up  one  day  with  his  ten  yellow  tickets, 
and  everybody  knew  he  had  not  said  a  verse,  but 
had  just  got  them  by  trading  with  the  boys.  But 
he  received  his  Bible  with  all  the  serious  air  of  a 
diligent  student !  " 

Mark  Twain,  save  when  in  humorous  vein,  has 
never  pretended  that  his  success  was  due  to  any 
marvellous  qualities  of  mind,  any  indefatigable 
industry,  any  innate  energy  and  perseverance. 
I  have  good  reason  to  recall  his  favourite  theory, 
which  he  was  fond  of  expounding,  to  the  effect  that 
circumstance  is  man's  master.  He  likened  circum- 


THE  MAN  21 

stance  to  the  attraction  of  gravity  ;  and  declared  that 
while  it  is  man's  privilege  to  argue  with  circum 
stance,  as  it  is  the  honourable  privilege  of  the  falling 
body  to  argue  with  the  attraction  of  gravity,  it  does 
no  good :  man  has  to  obey.  Circumstance  has  as 
its  working  partner  man's  temperament,  his  natural 
disposition.  Temperament  is  not  the  creation  of 
man,  but  an  innate  quality ;  over  it  he  has  no 
authority  ;  for  its  acts  he  cannot  be  held  responsible. 
It  cannot  be  permanently  changed  or  even  modified. 
No  power  can  keep  it  modified.  For  it  is  inherent 
and  enduring,  as  unchanging  as  the  lines  upon  the 
thumb  or  the  conformation  of  the  skull.  Throughout 
his  life,  circumstance  seemed  like  a  watchful  spirit, 
switching  his  temperament  into  those  channe.  3  of 
experience  and  development  leading  unerringly  to 
the  career  of  the  author. 

The  death  of  Judge  Clemens  was  the  first  link  in 
the  long  chain  of  circumstance  —  for  his  son  was 
at  once  taken  from  school  and  apprenticed  to  the 
editor  and  proprietor  of  the  Hannibal  Courier. 
He  was  allowed  the  usual  emolument  of  the  office 
of  apprentice,  "  board  and  clothes,  but  no  money  "  ; 
and  even  at  that,  though  the  board  was  paid,  the 
clothes  rarely  materialized.  Several  weeks  later  his 
brother  Orion  returned  to  Hannibal,  and  in  1850 


22  MARK  TWAIN 

brought  out  a  little  paper  called  the  Hannibal 
Journal.  He  took  Sam  out  of  the  Courier  office 
and  engaged  him  for  the  Journal  at  $3.50  a  week — 
though  he  was  never  able  to  pay  a  cent  of  the  wages. 
One  of  Mark's  fellow-townsmen  once  confessed : 
"  Yes,  I  knew  him  when  he  was  a  boy.  He  was  a 
printer's  devil — I  think  that's  what  they  called 
him — and  they  didn't  miss  it."  At  a  banquet  some 
years  ago,  Mark  Twain  aptly  described  at  length 
his  experiences  as  a  printer's  apprentice.  There 
were  a  thousand  and  one  menial  services  he  was  called 
upon  to  perform.  If  the  subscribers  paid  at  all,  it 
was  only  sometimes — and  then  the  town  subscribers 
paid  in  groceries,  the  country  subscribers  in  cabbages 
and  cordwood.  If  they  paid,  they  were  puffed  in 
the  paper ;  and  if  the  editor  forgot  to  insert  the 
puff,  the  subscriber  stopped  the  paper !  Every 
subscriber  regarded  himself  as  assistant  editor, 
ex  officio ;  gave  orders  as  to  how  the  paper  was  to 
be  edited,  supplied  it  with  opinions,  and  directed  its 
policy.  Of  course,  every  time  the  editor  failed  to 
follow  his  suggestions,  he  revenged  himself  by  stopping 
the  paper ! 

After  some  financial  stress,  the  paper  was  moved 
into  the  Clemens  home,  a  "  two  -  story  brick  "  ; 
and  here  for  several  years  it  managed  to  worry  along, 


THE  MAN  23 

spasmodically  hovering  between  life  and  death. 
Life  was  easy  with  the  editors  of  that  paper ;  for 
if  they  pied  a  form,  they  suspended  until  the  next 
week.  They  always  suspended  anyhow,  every  now 
and  then,  when  the  fishing  was  good ;  and  always 
fell  back  upon  the  illness  of  the  editor  as  a  convenient 
excuse.  Mark  admitted  that  this  was  a  paltry 
excuse,  for  the  all- sufficing  reason  that  a  paper 
of  that  sort  was  just  as  well  off  with  a  sick  editor 
as  a  well  one,  and  better  off  with  a  dead  one  than  with 
either  of  them.  At  the  age  of  fifteen  he  considered 
himself  a  skilled  journeyman  printer  ;  and  his  faculty 
for  comedic  portrayal  had  already  betrayed  itself  in 
occasional  clumsy  efforts.  In  My  First  Literary 
Venture,  he  narrates  his  experiences,  amongst  others 
how  greatly  he  increased  the  circulation  of  the 
paper,  and  incensed  the  "  inveterate  woman-killer,'' 
whose  poetry  for  that  week's  paper  read,  "  To  Mary 

in   H 1 "  (Hannibal).      Mark  added  a  "  snappy 

foot-note  "  at  the  bottom,  in  which  he  agreed  to  let 
the  thing  pass,  for  just  that  once ;  but  distinctly 
warning  Mr.  J.  Gordon  Runnels  that  the  paper  had  a 
character  to  sustain,  and  that  in  future,  when  Mr. 
Runnels  wanted  to  commune  with  his  friends  in 
h — 1,  he  must  select  some  other  medium  for  that 
communication !  Many  were  the  humorous  skits, 


24  MARK  TWAIN 

crudely  illustrated  with  cuts  made  from  wooden 
blocks  hacked  out  with  his  jack-knife,  which  the 
mischievous  young  "  devil  "  inserted  in  his  brother's 
paper.  Here  we  may  discern  the  first  spontaneous 
outer oppings  of  the  genuine  humorist.  "  It  was  on 
this  paper,  the  Hannibal  Journal,"  says  his  biog 
rapher,  Mr.  Albert  B.  Paine,  "  that  young  Sam 
Clemens  began  his  writings — burlesques,  as  a  rule, 
of  local  characters  and  conditions — usually  published 
in  his  brother's  absence,  generally  resulting  in  trouble 
on  his  return.  Yet  they  made  the  paper  sell,  and  if 
Orion  had  but  realized  his  possession  he  might  have 
turned  his  brother's  talent  into  capital  even  then." 

One  evening  in  1853,  the  boy,  consumed  with 
wanderlust,  asked  his  mother  for  five  dollars — to 
start  on  his  travels.  He  failed  to  receive  the  money, 
but  he  defiantly  announced  that  he  would  go  "  any 
how."  He  had  managed  to  save  a  tiny  sum,  and 
that  night  he  disappeared  and  fled  to  St  Louis. 
There  he  worked  in  the  composing-room  of  the 
Evening  News  for  a  time,  and  then  started  out  "  to 
see  the  world  " — New  York,  where  a  little  World's 
Fair  was  in  progress.  He  was  somewhat  better  off 
than  was  Benjamin  Franklin  when  he  entered 
Philadelphia — for  he  had  two  or  three  dollars  in 
pocket- change,  and  a  ten-dollar  bank-bill  concealed 


THE  MAN  25 

in  the  lining  of  his  coat.  For  a  time  he  sweltered 
in  a  villainous  mechanics'  boarding-house  in  Duane 
Street,  and  worked  at  starvation  wages  in  the 
printing-office  of  Gray  &  Green.  Being  recognized 
one  day  by  a  man  from  Hannibal,  he  fled  to  Phila 
delphia  where  he  worked  for  some  months  as  a 
"  sub  "  on  the  Inquirer  and  the  Public  Ledger.  Next 
came  a  flying  trip  to  Washington  "to  see  the  sights 
there,"  and  then  back  he  went  to  the  Mississippi 
Valley.  This  journey  to  the  "  vague  and  fabled 
East "  really  opened  his  eyes  to  the  great  possi 
bilities  that  the  world  has  in  store  for  the  traveller. 
Meantime,  Orion  had  gone  to  Muscatine,  Ohio, 
and  acquired  a  small  interest  there ;  and,  after  his 
marriage,  he  and  his  wife  went  to  Keokuk  and  started 
a  little  job  printing-office.  Here  Sam  worked  with 
his  brother  until  the  winter  of  1856-7,  when  circum 
stance  once  again  played  the  part  of  good  fairy. 
As  he  was  walking  along  the  street  one  snowy 
evening,  his  attention  was  attracted  by  a  piece  of 
paper  which  the  wind  had  blown  against  the  wall. 
It  proved  to  be  a  fifty-dollar  bill ;  and  after  advertis 
ing  for  the  owner  for  four  days,  he  stealthily  moved 
to  Cincinnati  in  order  "  to  take  that  money  out  of 
danger."  Now  comes  the  second  crucial  event  in 
his  life  ! 


26  MARK  TWAIN 

For  long  the  ambition  for  river  life  had  remained 
with  him — and  now  there  seemed  some  possibility 
of  realizing  these  ambitions.  He  first  wanted  to  be 
a  cabin  boy ;  then  his  ideal  was  to  be  a  deck  hand, 
because  of  his  splendid  conspicuousness  as  he  stood 
on  the  end  of  the  stage  plank  with  a  coil  of  rope  in 
his  hand.  But  these  were  only  day-dreams — he 
didn't  admit,  even  to  himself,  that  they  were  any 
thing  more  than  heavenly  impossibilities.  But  as  he 
worked  during  the  winter  in  the  printing-office  of 
Wrightson  &  Company  of  Cincinnati,  he  whiled 
away  his  leisure  hours  reading  Lieutenant  Herndon's 
account  of  his  explorations  of  the  Amazon,  and 
became  greatly  interested  in  his  description  of  the 
cocoa  industry.  Now  he  set  to  work  to  map  out 
a  new  and  thrilling  career.  The  expedition  sent  out 
by  the  government  to  explore  the  Amazon  had 
encountered  difficulties  and  left  unfinished  the  ex 
ploration  of  the  country  about  the  head-waters, 
thousands  of  miles  from  the  mouth  of  the  river. 
It  mattered  not  to  him  that  New  Orleans  was  fifteen 
hundred  miles  away  from  Cincinnati,  and  that  he 
had  only  thirty  dollars  left.  His  mind  was  made  up  : 
he  would  go  on  and  complete  the  work  of  exploration. 
So  in  April,  1857,  he  set  sail  for  New  Orleans  on  an 
ancient  tub,  called  the  Paul  Jones.  For  the  paltry 


THE  MAN  27 

sum  of  sixteen  dollars,  he  was  enabled  to  revel  in 
the  unimagined  glories  of  the  main  saloon.  At 
last  he  was  under  way — realizing  his  boyhood 
dream,  unable  to  contain  himself  for  joy.  At  last 
he  saw  himself  as  that  hero  of  his  boyish  fancy — 
a  traveller. 

When  he  reached  New  Orleans,  after  the  pro 
longed  ecstasy  of  two  weeks  on  a  tiny  Mississippi 
steamer,  he  discovered  that  no  ship  was  leaving 
for  Para,  that  there  never  had  been  one  leaving  for 
Para,  and  that  there  probably  would  not  be  one 
leaving  for  Para  that  century.  A  policeman  made 
him  move  on,  threatening  to  run  him  in  if  he  ever 
caught  him  reflecting  in  the  public  street  again. 
Just  as  his  money  failed  him,  his  old  friend  circum 
stance  arrived,  with  another  turning-point  in  his 
life — a  new  link.  On  his  way  down  the  river  he  had 
met  Horace  Bixby;  he  turned  to  him  in  this  hour 
of  need.  It  has  been  charged  against  Mark  Twain 
that  he  was  deplorably  lazy — apocryphal  anecdotes 
are  still  narrated  with  much  gusto  to  prove  it.  Think 
of  a  lazy  boy  undertaking  the  stupendous  task  of 
learning  to  know  the  intricate  and  treacherous  secrets 
of  the  great  river,  to  know  every  foot  of  the  route 
in  the  dark  as  well  as  he  knew  his  own  face  in  the 
glass  !  And  yet  he  confesses  that  he  was  unaware 


28  MARK  TWAIN 

of  the  immensity  of  the  undertaking  upon  which 
he  had  embarked. 

"In  1852,"  says  gixb^,  "I  was  chief  pilot  on 
the  Paul  Jones,  a  boat  that  made  occasional  trips 
from  Pittsburg  to  New  Orleans.  One  day  a  tall, 
angular,  hoosier-like  young  fellow,  whose  limbs 
appeared  to  be  fastened  with  leather  hinges,  entered 
the  pilot-house,  and  in  a  peculiar,  drawling  voice, 
said — 

" <  Good  mawnin,  sir.  Don't  you  want  to  take 
er  piert  young  fellow  and  teach  'im  how  to  be  er 
pilot  ?  ' 

6  No   sir ;    there  is   more  bother  about  it  than 
it's  worth.' 

"  6 1  wish  you  would,  mister.  I'm  er  printer  by 
trade,  but  it  don't  'pear  to  'gree  with  me,  and  I'm 
on  my  way  to  Central  America  for  my  health.  I 
believe  I'll  make  a  tolerable  good  pilot,  'cause  I 
like  the  river.' 

"  '  What  makes  you  pull  your  words  that  way  ?  ' 

"  '  I  don't  know,  mister ;    you'll  have  to  ask  my 
Ma.     She  pulls  hern  too.     Ain't  there  some  way 
that  we  can  fix  it,  so  that  you'll  teach  me  how  to  be 
-  er  pilot?' 

"  '  The  only  way  is  for  money.' 

"  '  How  much  are  you  going  to  charge  ? 


THE  MAN  29 

"  '  Well,  I'll  teach  you  the  river  for  $500.' 

"  c  Gee  whillikens  !  he  !  he  !  I  ain't  got  $500, 
but  I've  got  five  lots  in  Keokuk,  Iowa,  and  2000 
acres  of  land  in  Tennessee  that  is  worth  two  bits 
an  acre  any  time.  You  can  have  that  if  you 
want  it.' 

"  1  told  him  I  did  not  care  for  his  land,  and  after 
a  while  he  agreed  to  pay  $100  in  cash  (borrowed 
from  his  brother-in-law,  William  A.  Moffett,  of 
Virginia),  $150  in  twelve  months,  and  the  balance 
when  he  became  a  pilot.  He  was  with  me  for  a 
long  time,  but  sometimes  took  occasional  trips 
with  other  pilots."  And  he  significantly  adds : 
"  He  was  always  drawling  out  dry  jokes,  but  then 
we  did  not  pay  any  attention  to  him." 

It  cannot  be  thought  accidental  that  Sam  Clemens 
became  a  pilot.  Bixby  became  his  mentor,  the 
pilot-house  his  recitation-room,  the  steamboat  his 
university,  the  great  river  the  field  of  knowledge. 
In  that  stupendous  course  in  nature's  own  college, 
he  "  learned  the  river "  as  schoolboy  seldom 
masters  his  Greek  or  his  mathematics.  With  the 
naive  assurance  of  youth,  he  gaily  enters  upon  the 
task  of  "  learning  "  some  twelve  or  thirteen  hundred 
miles  of  the  great  Mississippi.  Long  afterwards, 
he  confessed  that  had  he  really  known  what  he  was 


30  MARK  TWAIN 

about  to  require  of  his  faculties,  he  would  never 
have  had  the  courage  to  begin. 

His  comic  sketches,  published  in  the  Hannibal 
Weekly  Courier  in  his  brother's  absence,  furnish 
the  first  link,  his  apprenticeship  to  Bixby  the 
second  link  in  the  chain  of  circumstance.  For  two 
years  and  a  half  he  sailed  the  river  as  a  master  pilot ; 
his  trustworthiness  secured  for  him  the  command 
of  some  of  the  best  boats  on  the  river,  and  he  was 
so  skilful  that  he  never  met  disaster  on  any  of  his 
trips.  He  narrowly  escaped  it  in  1861,  for  when 
Louisiana  seceded,  his  boat  was  drafted  into  the 
Confederate  service.  As  he  reached  St.  Louis,  having 
taken  passage  for  home,  a  shell  came  whizzing  by 
and  carried  off  part  of  the  pilot-house.  It  was  the 
end  of  an  era :  the  Civil  War  had  begun.  The 
occupation  of  the  pilot  was  gone  ;  but  the  river  had 
given  up  to  him  all  of  its  secrets.  He  was  to  show 
them  to  a  world,  in  Life  on  the  Mississippi  and 
Huckleberry  Finn. 

The  story  of  the  derivation  of  the  famous  nom 
de  guerre  has  often  been  narrated — and  as  often 
erroneously.  As  the  steamboat  approaches  a 
sandbank,  snag,  or  other  obstruction,  the  man  at 
the  bow  heaves  the  lead  and  sings  out.  "  By  the 
mark,  three,"  "  Mark  twain,"  etc. — meaning  three 


THE  MAN  31 

fathoms  deep,  two  fathoms,  and  so  on.  The  thought 
of  adopting  Mark  Twain  as  a  nom  de  guerre  was  not 
original  with  Clemens ;  but  the  world  owes  him  a 
debt  of  gratitude  for  making  forever  famous  a 
name  that,  but  for  him,  would  have  been  forever 
lost.  "  There  was  a  man,  Captain  Isaiah  Sellers, 
who  furnished  river  news  for  the  New  Orleans 
Picayune,  still  one  of  the  best  papers  in  the  South," 
Mr.  Clemens  once  confessed  to  Professor  Wm.  L. 
Phelps.  "  He  used  to  sign  his  articles  Mark  Twain. 
He  died  in  1863.  I  liked  the  name,  and  stole  it. 
I  think  I  have  done  him  no  wrong,  for  I  seem  to 
have  made  this  name  somewhat  generally  known." 

The  inglorious  escapade  of  his  military  career, 
at  which  he  himself  has  poked  unspeakable  fun,  and 
for  which  not  even  his  most  enthusiastic  biog 
raphers  have  any  excuse,  was  soon  ended.  Had 
his  heart  really  been  enlisted  on  the  side  of  the 
South,  he  would  doubtless  have  stayed  at  his  post. 
In  reality,  he  was  at  that  time  lacking  in  conviction ; 
and  in  after  life  he  became  a  thorough  Unionist  and 
Abolitionist.  In  the  summer  of  1861,  Governor 
Jackson  of  Missouri  called  for  fifty  thousand  volun 
teers  to  drive  out  the  Union  forces.  While  visiting 
in  the  small  town  where  his  boyhood  had  been  spent, 
Hannibal,  Marion  County,  young  Clemens  and  some 


32  MARK  TWAIN 

of  his  friends  met  together  in  a  secret  place  one  night, 
and  formed  themselves  into  a  military  company. 
The  spirited  but  untrained  Tom  Lyman  was  made 
captain ;  and  in  lieu  of  a  first  lieutenant — strange 
omission ! — young  Clemens  was  made  second  lieu 
tenant.  These  fifteen  hardy  souls  proudly  dubbed 
themselves  the  Marion  Rangers.  No  one  thought 
of  finding  fault  with  such  a  name — it  sounded 
too  well.  All  were  full  of  notions  as  high-flown  as 
the  name  of  their  company.  One  of  their  number, 
named  Dunlap,  was  ashamed  of  his  name,  because 
it  had  a  plebeian  sound  to  his  ear.  So  he  solved  the 
difficulty  and  gratified  his  aristocratic  ambitions  by 
writing  it  d'Unlap.  This  may  serve  as  a  sample 
of  the  stuff  of  which  the  company  was  made. 
Dunlap  was  by  no  means  useless  ;  for  he  invented 
hifalutin  names  for  the  camps,  and  generally  suc 
ceeded  in  proposing  a  name  that  was,  as  his  com 
panions  agreed,  "  no  slouch." 

There  was  no  real  organization,  nobody  obeyed 
orders,  there  was  never  a  battle.  They  retreated, 
according  to  the  tale  of  the  humorist,  at  every  sign 
of  the  enemy.  In  truth,  this  little  band  had  plenty 
of  stomach  for  fighting,  despite  its  loose  organization  ; 
and  quite  a  number  fought  all  through  the  war. 
Mark  Twain  is  doubtless  correct  in  the  main,  in  his 


THE  MAN  33 

assertion  that  he  has  not  given  an  unfair  picture 
of  the  conditions  prevailing  in  many  of  the  militia 
camps  in  the  first  months  of  the  war  between  the 
states.  The  men  were  raw  and  unseasoned,  and 
even  the  leaders  were  lacking  in  the  rudiments  of 
military  training  and  discipline.  The  situation  was 
strange  and  unprecedented,  the  terrors  were  none 
the  less  real  that  they  were  imaginary.  As  Mark 
says,  it  took  an  actual  collision  with  the  enemy  on 
the  field  of  battle  to  change  them  from  rabbits  into 
soldiers.  Young  Clemens,  according  to  his  nephew's 
account,  was  first  detailed  to  special  duty  on  the 
river  because  of  his  knowledge  acquired  as  a  pilot ; 
it  was  not  long  before  he  was  captured  and  paroled. 
Again  he  was  captured,  this  time  sent  to  St.  Louis,  and 
imprisoned  there  in  a  tobacco  warehouse.  Fearing 
recognition  and  tragic  consequences,  perhaps  court- 
martial  and  death,  should  he,  during  the  formalities 
of  exchange,  be  recognized  by  the  command  in  Grant's 
army  which  first  captured  him,  he  made  his  escape, 
abandoned  the  cause  which  he  afterwards  spoke  of  \ 
as  "  the  rebellion,"  and  went  west  as  secretary  to 
his  brother  Orion,  lately  appointed  Territorial 
Secretary  of  Nevada  by  the  President. 

A    very    credible    and    interesting    biography    of 
Mark  Twain  might  be  compiled  from  his  own  works  ; 
c 


34  MARK  TWAIN 

and  Roughing  It  is  full  of  autobiography  of  a  coloured 
sort,  though  in  the  main  correct.  His  joy  in  the 
prospect  of  that  trip,  the  exciting  details  of  the 
long  journey,  are  all  narrated  with  gusto  and  fine 
effect.  In  the  "  unique  sinecure  "  of  the  office  of 
private  secretary,  he  found  he  had  nothing  to  do 
and  no  salary ;  so  after  a  short  time — the  fear  of 
being  recognized  by  Union  soldiers  and  shot  for 
breaking  his  parole  still  haunting  him — he,  and  a 
companion,  went  off  together  on  a  fishing  jaunt  to 
Lake  Tahoe.  Everywhere  he  saw  fortunes  made  in 
a  moment.  He  fell  a  prey  to  the  prevailing  excite 
ment  and  went  mad  like  all  the  rest.  Little  wonder 
over  the  wild  talk,  when  cartloads  of  solid  silver 
bricks  as  large  as  pigs  of  lead  were  passing  by  every 
day  before  their  very  eyes.  The  wild  talk  grew  more 
frenzied  from  day  to  day.  And  young  Clemens 
yielded  to  no  one  in  enthusiasm  and  excitement. 
For  vividness  or  picturesqueness  of  expression  none 
could  vie  with  him.  With  three  companions,  he 
began  "  prospecting,"  with  the  most  indifferent 
success ;  and  soon  tiring  of  their  situation,  they 
moved  on  down  to  Esmeralda  (now  Aurora),  on  the 
other  side  of  Carson  City.  Here  new  life  seemed  to 
inspire  the  party.  What  mattered  it  if  they  were 
in  debt  to  the  butcher — for  did  they  not  own  thirty 


THE  MAN  35 

thousand  feet  apiece  in  the  "  richest  mines  on  earth  "  ! 
Who  cared  if  their  credit  was  not  good  with  the 
grocer,  so  long  as  they  revelled  in  mountains  of 
fictitious  wealth  and  raved  in  the  frenzied  cant  of 
the  hour  over  their  immediate  prospect  of  fabulous 
riches  !  But  at  last  the  practical  necessities  of  living 
put  a  sudden  damper  on  their  enthusiasm.  Clemens 
was  forced  at  last  to  abandon  mining,  and  go  to 
work  as  a  common  labourer  in  a  quartz  mill,  at  ten 
dollars  a  week  and  board — after  flour  had  soared  to  a 
dollar  a  pound  and  the  rate  on  borrowed  money 
had  gone  to  eight  per  cent,  a  month.  This  work  was 
very  exhausting,  and  after  a  week  Clemens  asked 
his  employer  for  an  advance  of  wages.  The  em 
ployer  replied  that  he  was  paying  Clemens  ten  dollars 
a  week,  and  thought  that  all  he  was  worth.  How 
much  did  he  want  ?  When  Clemens  replied  that  four 
hundred  thousand  dollars  a  month,  and  board,  was 
all  he  could  reasonably  ask,  considering  the  hard 
times,  he  was  ordered  off  the  premises  !  In  after 
days,  Mark  only  regretted  that,  in  view  of  the  arduous 
labours  he  had  performed  in  that  mill,  he  had  not 
asked  seven  hundred  thousand  for  his  services  ! 

After  a  time,  Mark  and  his  friend  Higbie  estab 
lished  their  claim  to  a  mine,  became  mad  with 
excitement,  and  indulged  in  the  wildest  dreams 


36  MARK  TWAIN 

for  the  future.  Under  the  laws  of  the  district, 
work  of  a  certain  character  must  be  done  upon  the 
claim  within  ten  days  after  location  in  order  to 
establish  the  right  of  possession.  Mark  was  called 
away  to  the  bedside  of  a  sick  friend,  Higbie  failed 
to  receive  Mark's  note,  and  the  work  was  never 
done — each  thinking  it  was  being  properly  attended 
to  by  the  other.  On  their  return,  they  discovered 
that  their  claim  was  "  re-located,"  and  that 
millions  had  slipped  from  their  grasp  !  The  very 
stars  in  their  courses  seemed  to  fight  to  force  young 
Clemens  into  literature.  Had  Samuel  Clemens 
become  a  millionaire  at  this  time,  it  is  virtually 
certain  that  there  would  have  been  no  Mark  Twain. 
After  one  day  more  of  heartless  prospecting, 
Clemens  "  dropped  in  "  at  the  wayside  post-office.  It 
was  the  hour  of  fate  !  A  letter  awaited  him  there. 
We  cannot  call  it  accident — it  was  the  result  of 
forces  and  events  which  had  long  been  converging 
toward  this  end.  Samuel  Clemens  began  his  career 
as  an  itinerant,  tramping  "  jour  "  printer.  He  wrote 
for  the  papers  on  which  he  served  as  printer ;  and 
he  actually  read  the  matter  he  set  up  in  type.  By 
observation  on  his  travels,  by  study  of  the  writing 
of  others,  Clemens  acquired  information,  knowledge 
of  life,  and  ingenuity  of  expression.  He  hadn't 


THE  MAN  37 

served  his  ten-years'  apprenticeship  as  a  printer  for 
nothing.  In  the  process  of  setting  up  tons  of  good 
and  bad  literature,  he  had  learned — half  uncon 
sciously — to  appraise  and  to  discriminate.  In  the 
same  half -unconscious  way,  he  was  actually  gaining 
some  inkling  of  the  niceties  of  style.  After  he  began 
"  learning  the  river,"  Clemens  once  wrote  a  funny 
sketch  about  Captain  Sellers  which  made  a  genuine 
"  hit  "  with  the  officers  on  the  boat.  The  sketch  fell 
into  the  hands  of  the  "  river-editor  "  of  the  St.  Louis 
Republican,  found  a  place  in  that  journal,  and  was 
widely  copied  throughout  the  West.  On  the  strength 
of  it,  Clemens  became  a  sort  of  river  reporter,  and 
from  time  to  time  published  memoranda  and  comic 
squibs  in  the  Republican.  That  passion  which  a 
French  critic  has  characterized  as  distinctively 
American,  the  passion  for  "  seeing  yourself  in  print,"  X 
still  burned  in  Clemens,  even  during  all  the  hardships 
of  prospecting  and  milling.  At  intervals  he  sent 
from  the  mining  regions  of  "  Washoe,"  as  all  that 
part  of  Nevada  was  then  called,  humorous  letters 
signed  "  Josh  "  to  the  Daily  Territorial  Enterprise 
of  Virginia  City,  at  that  time  one  of  the  most 
progressive  and  wide  -  awake  newspapers  in  the 
West. 

The  fateful  letter  which  I  have  mentioned,  con- 


38  MARK  TWAIN 

tained  an  offer  to  Clemens  from  the  proprietor  of 
the  Enterprise,  of  the  position  of  city  editor,  at  a 
salary  of  twenty-five  dollars  a  week.  To  Clemens 
at  this  time,  this  offer  came  as  a  perfect  godsend. 
Twenty-five  dollars  a  week  was  nothing  short  of 
wealth,  luxury.  His  enthusiasm  oozed  away  when 
he  reflected  over  his  ignorance  and  incompetence ; 
and  he  gloomily  recalled  his  repeated  failures.  But 
necessity  faced  him ;  and  opportunity  knocks  but 
once  at  every  door.  His  doubts  were  speedily 
resolved ;  and  he  afterwards  confessed  that,  had 
he  been  offered  at  that  time  a  salary  to  translate 
the  Talmud  from  the  original  Hebrew,  he  would 
unhesitatingly  have  accepted,  despite  some  natural 
misgivings,  and  have  tried  to  throw  as  much  variety 
into  it  as  he  could  for  the  money.  It  was  to  fill  a 
vacancy,  caused  by  the  absence  of  Dan  De  Quille,  the 
regular  reporter,  on  a  visit  to  "  the  States,"  that 
Clemens  was  offered  this  position ;  but  he  retained 
it  after  De  Quille  returned.  "  Mark  and  I  had  our 
hands  full,"  relates  De  Quille,  "  and  no  grass  grew 
under  our  feet.  There  was  a  constant  rush  of  startling 
events  ;  they  came  tumbling  over  one  another  as 
though  playing  at  leap-frog.  While  a  stage  robbery 
was  being  written  up,  a  shooting  affray  started  ;  and 
perhaps  before  the  pistol  shots  had  ceased  to  echo 


THE  MAN  39 

among  the  surrounding  hills,  the  firebells  were  bang 
ing  out  an  alarm."  A  record  of  the  variegated  duties 
of  these  two,  found  in  an  old  copy  of  the  Territorial 
Enterprise  of  1863,  bears  the  unmistakable  hall 
marks  of  Mark  Twain.  "  Our  duty  is  to  keep  the 
universe  thoroughly  posted  concerning  murders  and 
street  fights,  and  balls  and  theatres,  and  pack-trains, 
and  churches,  and  lectures,  and  school-houses,  and 
city  military  affairs,  and  highway  robberies,  and 
Bible  societies,  and  hay  wagons,  and  the  thousand 
other  things  which  it  is  within  the  province  of  local 
reporters  to  keep  track  of  and  magnify  into  undue 
importance  for  the  instruction  of  the  readers  of  a 
great  daily  newspaper.  Beyond  this  revelation  every 
thing  connected  with  these  two  experiments  of  Pro 
vidence  must  for  ever  remain  an  impenetrable 
mystery."  An  admirable  picture  of  Mark  Twain 
on  his  native  heath,  in  the  latter  part  of  1863,  is 
given  by  Edward  Per  on  Kingston,  author  of  The 
Genial  Showman,  in  the  introduction  to  the  English 
edition  of  The  Innocents  Abroad. 

The  fame  of  the  Western  humorist  had  already 
reached  the  ears  of  Kingston ;  and  as  soon  as  he 
reached  Virginia  City,  he  went  to  the  office  of  the 
Territorial  Enterprise  and  asked  to  be  presented 
to  Mark  Twain. 


40  MARK  TWAIN 

When  he  heard  his  name  called  by  some  one, 
Clemens  called  out : 

"  Pass  the  gentleman  into  my  den.  The  noble 
animal  is  here." 

The  noble  animal  proved  to  be  "a  young  man, 
strongly  built,  ruddy  in  complexion,  his  hair  of  a 
sunny  hue,  his  eyes  light  and  twinkling,  in  manner 
hearty,  and  nothing  of  the  student  about  him — 
one  who  looked  as  if  he  could  take  his  own  part  in 
a  quarrel,  strike  a  smart  blow  as  readily  as  he  could 
say  a  telling  thing,  bluffly  jolly,  brusquely  cordial, 
off-handedly  good-natured."  The  picture  is  de 
tailed  and  vivid  : — 

"Let  it  be  borne  in  mind  that  from  the  windows  of  the 
newspaper  office  the  American  desert  was  visible  ;  that  within 
a  radius  of  ten  miles  Indians  were  encamping  amongst  the 
sage-brush ;  that  the  whole  city  was  populated  with  miners, 
adventurers,  Jew  traders,  gamblers,  and  all  the  rough-and- 
tumble  class  which  a  mining  town  in  a  new  territory  collects 
together,  and  it  will  be  readily  understood  that  a  reporter  for 
a  daily  paper  in  such  a  place  must  neither  go  about  his  duties 
wearing  light  kid  gloves,  nor  be  fastidious  about  having  gilt 
edges  to  his  note-books.  In  Mark  Twain  I  found  the  very 
man  I  had  expected  to  see — a  flower  of  the  wilderness,  tinged 
with  the  colour  of  the  soil,  the  man  of  thought  and  the  man  of 
action  rolled  into  one,  humorist  and  hard-worker,  Momus  in  a 
felt  hat  and  jack-boots.  In  the  reporter  of  the  Territorial 
Enterprise  I  became  introduced  to  a  Californian  celebrity,  rich 
in  eccentricities  of  thought,  lively  in  fancy,  quaint  in  remark, 
whose  residence  upon  the  fringe  of  civilization  had  allowed  his 


THE  MAN  41 

humour  to  develop   without  restraint,  and  his  speech  to  be 
rarely  idiomatic." 

Under  the  influence  of  the  example  of  the  pro 
prietors  of  the  Enterprise,  strict  stylistic  disciplina 
rians  of  the  Dana  school  of  journalism,  Clemens 
learned  the  advantages  of  the  crisp,  direct  style  x 
which  characterizes  his  writing.  As  a  reporter, 
he  was  really  industrious  in  matters  that  met  his 
fancy ;  but  "  cast-iron  items  " — for  he  hated  facts 
and  figures  requiring  absolute  accuracy — got  from 
him  only  "  a  lick  and  a  promise."  He  was  much 
interested  in  Tom  Fitch's  effort  to  establish  a  literary 
journal,  The  Weekly  Occidental.  Daggett's  opening 
chapters  of  a  wonderful  story,  of  which  Fitch,  Mrs 
Fitch,  J.  T.  Goodman,  Dan  De  Quille,  and  Clemens 
were  to  write  successive  instalments,  gave  that 
paper  the  coup  de  grace  in  its  very  first  issue.  Of 
this  wonderful  novel,  at  the  close  of  each  instalment 
of  which  the  "  hero  was  left  in  a  position  of  such 
peril  that  it  seemed  impossible  he  could  be  rescued, 
except  through  means  and  wisdom  more  than 
human  "  ;  of  the  Bohemian  days  of  the  "  Visigoths," 
— Clemens,  De  Quille,  Frank  May,  Louis  Aldrich, 
and  their  confreres  ;  of  the  practical  jokes  played  on 
each  other,  particularly  the  incident  of  the  imitation 
meerschaum  ("  mere  sham  ")  pipe,  solemnly  presented 


42  MARK  TWAIN 

to  Clemens  by  Steve  Gillis,  C.  A.  V.  Putnam,  D.  E. 
McCarthy,  De  Quille  and  others — all  these  belong 
to  the  fascinating  domain  of  the  biographer.  When 
Clemens  was  sent  down  to  Carson  City  to  report 
the  meetings  of  the  first  Nevada  Legislature,  he 
began  for  the  first  time  to  sign  his  letters  "  Mark 
Twain."  In  his  Autobiography  he  has  explained 
that  his  function  as  a  legislative  correspondent  was 
to  dispense  compliment  and  censure  with  impartial 
justice.  As  his  disquisitions  covered  about  half 
a  page  each  morning  in  the  Enterprise,  it  is  easy  to 
understand  that  he  was  an  "  influence."  Questioned 
by  Carlyle  Smith  in  regard  to  his  choice  of 
"  Mark  Twain,"  Mr.  Clemens  replied :  "I  chose 
my  pseudonym  because  to  nine  hundred  and  ninety- 
nine  persons  out  of  a  thousand  it  had  no  meaning, 
and  also  because  it  was  short.  I  was  a  reporter  in 
the  Legislature  at  the  time,  and  I  wished  to  save  the 
Legislature  time.  It  was  much  shorter  to  say  in 
their  debates — for  I  was  certain  to  be  the  occasion 
of  some  questions  of  privilege — '  Mark  Twain  '  than 
'  the  unprincipled  and  lying  Parliamentary  Re 
porter  of  the  Territorial  Enterprise.' ' 

Already  his  name  was  known  the  whole  length 
of  the  Pacific  Coast ;  the  Enterprise  published 
many  things  from  his  pen  which  gave  him  local, 


THE  MAN  43 

and  afterwards  national,  fame ;  such  sketches  as 
The  Undertaker's  Chat,  The  Petrified  Man  and  The 
Marvellous  '  Bloody  Massacre  '  had  attracted  favour 
able  and  wide  notice  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
But  his  career  in  Carson  City  came  to  a  sudden  close 
when  he  challenged  the  editor  of  the  Virginia  Union 
to  a  duel,  the  bloodless  conclusion  of  which  is 
narrated  in  the  Autobiography.  But  even  a  challenge 
to  a  duel  was  against  the  new  law  of  Nevada ;  and 
obeying  the  warning  of  Governor  North,  the  duellists 
crossed  the  border  without  ceremony,  and  stood  not 
upon  the  order  of  their  going. 

While  Mark  Twain  was  still  with  the  Enterprise, 
he  was  in  the  habit  of  reserving  all  his  "  sketches  " 
for  the  San  Francisco  newspapers,  the  Golden  Era 
and  the  Morning  Call.  He  now  turns  his  steps  to 
that  storied  city  of  "  Frisco,"  and  was  not  long  in  ex 
tending  his  fame  on  that  coast.  He  was  incorrigibly 
lazy,  as  George  Barnes,  the  editor  of  the  Call,  soon 
discovered ;  and  Kipling  was  told  when  he  was  in 
San  Francisco  that  Mark  was  in  the  habit  of  coiling 
himself  into  a  heap  and  meditating  until  the  last 
minute,  when  he  would  produce  copy  having  no 
relationship  to  the  subject  of  his  assignment — 
"  which  made  the  editor  swear  horribly,  and  the 
readers  of  The  Call  ask  for  more."  His  love  for 


44  MARK  TWAIN 

practical  joking  during  the  California  days  brought 
him  unpopularity  ;  and  one  reads  in  a  San  Francisco 
paper  of  the  early  days  :  "  There  have  been  moments 
in  the  lives  of  various  kind-hearted  and  respectable 
citizens  of  California  and  Nevada,  when,  if  Mark 
Twain  were  before  them  as  members  of  a  vigilance 
committee  for  any  mild  crime,  such  as  mule- stealing 
or  arson,  it  is  to  be  feared  his  shrift  would  have  been 
short.  What  a  dramatic  picture  the  idea  conjures 
up,  to  be  sure  !  Mark,  before  these  honest  men, 
infuriated  by  his  practical  jokes,  trying  to  show 
them  what  an  innocent  creature  he  was  when  it  came 
to  mules,  or  how  the  only  policy  of  fire  insurance 
he  held  had  lapsed,  how  void  of  guile  he  was  in  any 
direction,  and  all  with  that  inimitable  drawl,  that 
perplexed  countenance  and  peculiar  scraping  of 
the  left  foot,  like  a  boy  speaking  his  first  piece  at 
school."  If  he  just  escaped  disaster,  he  likewise  just 
escaped  millions ;  on  one  occasion,  for  the  space 
of  a  few  moments,  he  owned  the  famous  Comstock 
Lode,  which  was,  though  he  never  suspected  it, 
worth  millions.  His  trunkful  of  securities,  which 
were  eminently  saleable  at  one  time,  proved  to  be 
of  fictitious  value  when  "  the  bottom  dropped  out " 
of  the  Nevada  boom;  and  that  silver  mine,  which 
he  was  commissioned  to  sell  in  New  York,  was 


THE  MAN  45 

finally  sold  for  three  million  dollars  !  It  was,  as 
Mark  says,  the  blind  lead  over  again.  Mark  Twain 
had  the  true  Midas  touch  ;  but  the  mine  of  riches  he 
was  destined  to  discover  was  a  mine,  not  of  gold  or 
silver,  but  the  mine  of  intellect  and  rich  human 
experience. 

To  The  Golden  Era,  Mark  Twain,  like  Prentice 
Mulford  and  Joaquin  Miller,  contributed  freely; 
and  after  a  time  he  became  associated  with  Bret 
Harte  on  The  Calif  ornian,  Harte  as  editor  at  twenty 
dollars  a  week,  and  Mark  receiving  twelve  dollars 
for  an  article.  Here  forgathered  that  group  of 
brilliant  writers  of  the  Pacific  Slope,  numbering 
Bret  Harte,  Mark  Twain,  Charles  Warren  Stoddard, 
Charles  Henry  Webb,  and  Prentice  Mulford  among 
its  celebrities  ;  two  of  that  remarkable  coterie  were 
soon  destined  to  achieve  world- wide  fame.  "  These 
ingenuous  young  men,  with  the  fatuity  of  gifted 
people,"  says  Mr.  Howells,  "had  established  a  literary 
newspaper  in  San  Francisco,  and  they  brilliantly 
co-operated  in  its  early  extinction."  Of  his  first 
meeting  with  Mark  Twain,  Bret  Harte  has  left  a 
memorable  picture : — 

"  His  head  was  striking.  He  had  the  curly  hair,  the 
aquiline  nose,  and  even  the  aquiline  eye — an  eye  so  eagle- 
like  that  a  second  lid  would  not  have  surprised  me — of  an 


46  MARK  TWAIN 

unusual  and  dominant  nature.  His  eyebrows  were  very  thick 
and  bushy.  His  dress  was  careless,  and  his  general  manner 
was  one  of  supreme  indifference  to  surroundings  and  circum 
stances.  Barnes  introduced  him  as  Mr.  Sam  Clemens,  and 
remarked  that  he  had  shown  a  very  unusual  talent  in  a  number 
of  newspaper  articles  contributed  over  the  signature  of  '  Mark 
Twain.' " 

Mark  tired  of  the  life  of  literary  drudgery  in  San 
Francisco — on  one  occasion  he  was  reduced  to  a 
solitary  ten- cent  piece ;  and  General  John  McComb 
wooed  him  back  to  journalism  just  as  he  was  on  the 
point  of  returning  to  his  old  work  on  the  Mississippi 
River,  this  time  as  a  Government  pilot.  During  the 
earlier  years  in  San  Francisco,  he  was  in  the  habit 
of  writing  weekly  letters  to  the  Territorial  Enterprise 
— personals,  market-chat,  and  the  like.  But  when 
he  criticized  the  police  department  of  San  Francisco 
in  the  most  scathing  terms,  the  officials  "  found 
means  for  bringing  charges  that  made  the  author's 
presence  there  difficult  and  comfortless."  So  he 
welcomed  the  opportunity  to  join  Steve  Gillis  in 
a  pilgrimage  to  the  mountain  home  of  Jim  Gillis, 
his  brother— a  "  sort  of  Bohemian  infirmary." 
Mark  Twain  revelled  in  the  delightful  company  of 
the  original  of  Bret  Harte's  "  Truthful  James," 
and  he  enjoyed  the  mining  methods  of  Jackass 
Hill,  like  the  true  Bohemian  that  he  was.  Soon  after 


THE  MAN  47 

his  arrival,  Mark  and  Jim  Gillis  started  out  in  search 
of  golden  pockets.     As  De  Quille  says  : — 

"  They  soon  found  and  spent  some  days  in  working  up  the 
undisturbed  trail  of  an  undiscovered  deposit.  They  were  on 
the  '  golden  bee-line '  and  stuck  to  it  faithfully,  though  it  was 
necessary  to  carry  each  sample  of  dirt  a  considerable  distance 
to  a  small  stream  in  the  bed  of  a  canon  in  order  to  wash  it. 
However,  Mark  hungered  and  thirsted  to  find  a  big  rich  pocket, 
and  he  pitched  in  after  the  manner  of  Joe  Bowers  of  old — 
just  like  a  thousand  of  brick. 

"  Each  step  made  sure  by  the  finding  of  golden  grains,  they 
at  last  came  upon  the  pocket  whence  these  grains  had  trailed 
out  down  the  slope  of  the  mountain.  It  was  a  cold,  dreary 
drizzling  day  when  the  '  home  deposit '  was  found.  The  first 
sample  of  dirt  carried  to  the  stream  and  washed  out  yielded 
only  a  few  cents.  Although  the  right  vein  had  been  discovered, 
they  had  as  yet  found  only  the  tail  end  of  the  pocket. 

"  Returning  to  the  vein,  they  dug  a  sample  of  the  decomposed 
ore  from  a  new  place,  and  were  about  to  carry  it  down  to  the 
ravine  and  test  it,  when  the  rain  increased  to  a  lively  downpour." 

Mark  was  chilled  to  the  bone,  and  refused  to  carry 
another  pail  of  water.  In  slow,  drawling  tones 
he  protested  decisively  : 

"  Jim,  I  won't  carry  any  more  water.  This  work 
is  too  disagreeable.  Let's  go  to  the  house  and  wait 
till  it  clears  up." 

Gillis  was  eager  to  test  the  sample  he  had  just 
taken  out. 

"  Bring  just  one  more  pail,  Sam,"  he  urged. 

"  I  won't  do  it,  Jim  !  "  replied  the  now  thoroughly 


48  MARK  TWAIN 

disgusted    Clemens.      "  Not    a    drop !      Not    if    I 
knew  there  were  a  million  dollars  in  that  pan  !  " 

Moved  by  Sam's  dejected  appearance — blue  nose 
and  humped  back — and  realizing  doubtless  that  it 
was  futile  to  reason  with  him  further,  Jim  yielded — 
and  emptied  the  sacks  of  dirt  just  dug  upon  the 
ground.  They  now  started  out  for  the  nearest  shelter, 
the  hotel  in  Angel's  Camp,  kept  by  Coon  Drayton, 
formerly  a  Mississippi  River  pilot.  Imagine  the 
jests  and  shouts  that  went  around  as  Mark  and 
Coon  vied  with  each  other  in  narrating  interesting 
experiences.  For  three  days  the  rain  and  the 
stories  held  out ;  and  among  those  told  by  Drayton 
was  a  story  of  a  frog.  He  narrated  this  story  with 
the  utmost  solemnity  as  a  thing  that  had  happened 
in  Angel's  Camp  in  the  spring  of  '49 — the  story  of 
a  frog  trained  by  its  owner  to  become  a  wonderful 
jumper,  but  which  failed  to  "  make  good  "  in  a 
contest  because  the  owner  of  a  rival  frog,  in  order 
to  secure  the  winning  of  the  wager,  filled  the  trained 
frog  full  of  shot  during  its  owner's  absence.  This  story 
appealed  irresistibly  to  Mark  as  a  first-rate  story  told 
in  a  first-rate  way ;  he  divined  in  it  the  magic  quality 
unsuspected  by  the  narrator — universal  humour. 
He  made  notes  in  order  to  remember  the  story, 
and  on  his  return  to  the  Gillis'  cabin,  "  wrote  it 


THE  MAN  49 

up."  He  wrote  a  number  of  other  things  besides, 
all  of  which  he  valued  above  the  frog  story;  but 
Gillis  thought  it  the  best  thing  he  had  ever 
written. 

Meantime  the  rain  had  washed  off  the  surface 
soil  from  their  last  pan,  which  they  had  left  in  their 
hurry.  Some  passing  miners  were  astonished  to 
behold  the  ground  glittering  with  gold ;  they  ap 
propriated  it,  but  dared  not  molest  the  deposit 
until  the  expiration  of  the  thirty- day  claim-notice 
posted  by  Jim  Gillis.  They  sat  down  to  wait, 
hoping  that  the  claimants  would  not  return.  At 
the  expiration  of  the  thirty  days,  the  claim- jumpers 
took  possession,  and  soon  cleared  out  the  pocket, 
which  yielded  twenty  thousand  dollars.  It  was  one 
of  the  most  fortunate  accidents  in  Mark  Twain's 
career.  He  came  within  one  pail  of  water  of  com 
parative  wealth  ;  but  had  he  discovered  that  pocket, 
he  would  probably  have  settled  down  as  a  pocket- 
miner,  and  might  have  pounded  quartz  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  Had  his  nerve  held  out  a  moment  longer,  he 
would  never  have  gone  to  Angel's  Camp,  would  never 
have  heard  The  Story  of  the  Jumping  Frog,  and 
would  have  escaped  that  sudden  fame  which  this 
little  story  soon  brought  him. 

On  his  return  to  San  Francisco,  he  dropped  in  one 


50  MARK  TWAIN 

morning  to  see  Bret  Harte,  and  told  him  this  story. 
As  Harte  records  : 

"  He  spoke  in  a  slow,  rather  satirical  drawl,  which  was  in 
itself  irresistible.  He  went  on  to  tell  one  of  those  extravagant 
stories,  and  half-unconsciously  dropped  into  the  lazy  tone  and 
manner  of  the  original  narrator.  I  asked  him  to  tell  it  again 
to  a  friend  who  came  in,  and  they  asked  him  to  write  it  for  The 
Californian.  He  did  so,  and  when  published  it  was  an 
emphatic  success.  It  was  the  first  work  of  his  that  had 
attracted  general  attention,  and  it  crossed  the  Sierras  for  an 
Eastern  reading.  The  story  was  '  The  Jumping  Frog  of  Cala- 
veras.'  It  is  now  known  and  laughed  over,  I  suppose,  wherever 
the  English  language  is  spoken  ;  but  it  will  never  be  as  funny 
to  anyone  in  print  as  it  was  to  me,  told  for  the  first  time,  by 
the  unknown  Twain  himself,  on  that  morning  in  the  San 
Francisco  Mint." 

When  Artemus  Ward  passed  through  California 
on  a  literary  tour  in  1864,  Mark  Twain  regaled 
him  —  as  he  regaled  all  worthy  acquaintances — 
with  his  favourite  story,  The  Jumping  Frog.  Ward 
was  delighted  with  it. 

"  Write  it  out,"  he  said,  "  give  it  all  the  necessary 
touches,  and  let  me  use  it  in  a  volume  of  sketches  I 
am  preparing  for  the  press.  Just  send  it  to  Carleton, 
my  publisher,  in  New  York." 

It  arrived  too  late  for  Ward's  book,  and  Carleton 
presented  it  to  Henry  Clapp,  who  published  it  in 
his  paper,  The  Saturday  Press  of  November  18, 
1864.  In  his  Autobiography,  Mr.  Clemens  has  narrated 


THE  MAN  51 

how  The  Jumping  Frog  put  a  quietus  on  The  Saturday 
Press,  and  was  immediately  copied  in  numerous 
newspapers  in  England  and  America.  He  was 
always  proud  of  the  celebrity  that  story  achieved ; 
but  he  never  sought  to  claim  the  credit  for  himself. 
He  freely  admits  that  it  was  not  Mark  Twain,  but 
the  frog,  that  became  celebrated.  The  author,  alas, 
remained  in  obscurity  ! 

Carleton  afterwards  confessed  that  he  had  lost 
the  chance  of  a  life -time  by  giving  The  Jumping 
Frog  away ;  but  Mark  Twain's  old  friend,  Charles 
Henry  Webb,  came  to  the  rescue  and  published 
it.  About  four  thousand  copies  were  sold  in 
three  years ;  but  the  real  fame  of  the  story 
was  in  its  newspaper  and  magazine  notoriety. 
In  1872  it  was  translated  into  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes ;  and  it  was  almost  as  widely  read 
in  England,  India,  and  Australia  as  it  was  in 
America. 

Meantime  Mark  Twain  was  still  awaiting  the 
rewards  of  journalism,  and  doing  literary  hack 
work  of  one  sort  or  another.  In  1866  the  pro 
prietors  of  the  Sacramento  Union  employed  him  to 
write  a  series  of  letters  from  the  Sandwich  Islands. 
The  purpose  of  these  letters  was  to  give  an  account 
of  the  sugar  industry.  Mark  told  the  story  of  sugar, 


52  MARK  TWAIN 

but,  as  was  his  wont,  threw  in  a  lot  of  extraneous 
matter  that  had  nothing  to  do  with  sugar.  It  was  the 
extraneous  matter,  and  not  the  sugar,  that  won  him 
a  wide  audience  on  the  Pacific  Coast.  During  these 
months  of  "  luxurious  vagrancy  "  he  described  in  the 
most  vivid  way  many  of  the  most  notable  features  of 
the  Sandwich  Islands.  Nowadays  such  letters  would 
at  once  have  been  embodied  in  a  volume.  In  his 
My  Debut  as  a  Literary  Person,  Mark  Twain  has 
described  in  admirably  graphic  style  his  great 
"  scoop  "  of  the  news  of  the  Hornet  disaster ;  how 
Anson  Burlingame  had  him,  ill  though  he  was,  carried 
on  a  cot  to  the  hospital,  so  that  he  could  interview  the 
half -dead  sailors.  His  bill — twenty  dollars  a  week  for 
general  correspondence,  and  one  hundred  dollars  a 
column  for  the  Hornet  story — was  paid  with  all  good 
will.  On  the  strength  of  this  story,  he  hoped  to 
become  a  "  Literary  Person,  "and  sent  his  account  of 
the  Hornet  disaster  to  Harper's  Magazine,  where  it 
appeared  in  December,  1866.  But  alas  !  he  could 
not  give  the  banquet  he  was  going  to  give  to  celebrate 
his  debut  as  a  "  Literary  Person."  He  had  not 
written  the  "  Mark  Twain  "  distinctly,  and  when  it 
appeared  it  had  been  transformed  into  "  Mike 
Swain  "  ! 

When  Mark  returned  to  San  Francisco,  he  resolved 


THE  MAN  53 

to  follow  the  example  of  Stoddard  and  Mulford, 
and  "  enter  the  lecture  field."  The  "  extraneous 
matter  "  in  his  letters  to  the  Sacramento  Union  had 
made  him  "  notorious  " ;  and,  as  he  put  it,  "  San 
Francisco  invited  me  to  lecture."  The  historic 
account  of  that  lecture,  in  Roughing  It,  is  found 
elsewhere  in  this  book.  Noah  Brooks,  editor  of  the 
Alia  California,  who  was  present  at  this  lecture, 
has  written  the  following  graphic  piece  of  description : 
"  Mark  Twain's  method  as  a  lecturer  was  distinctly 
unique  and  novel.  His  slow,  deliberate  drawl, 
the  anxious  and  perturbed  expression  of  his  visage, 
the  apparently  painful  effort  with  which  he  framed 
his  sentences,  and,  above  all,  the  surprise  that  spread 
over  his  face  when  the  audience  roared  with  delight 
or  rapturously  applauded  the  finer  passages  of  his 
word-painting,  were  unlike  anything  of  the  kind 
they  had  ever  known.  All  this  was  original;  it 
was  Mark  Twain."  Employing  D.  E.  McCarthy 
as  his  agent,  Mark  gave  a  number  of  lectures  at 
various  places  on  the  Pacific  Coast.  From  this 
time  forward  we  recognize  in  Mark  Twain  one  of 
the  supreme  masters  of  the  art  of  lecturing  in  our 
time. 

In  December,  1866,  he  set  out  for  New  York,  pre 
paratory  to  the  grand  tour  around  the  world.    His  own 


54  MARK  TWAIN 

account  of  the  circular  describing  the  projected  trip 
is  famous.  He  had  proposed,  for  twelve  hundred 
dollars  in  gold, — at  the  rate  of  twenty  dollars  apiece, — 
to  write  a  series  of  letters  for  the  Alia  California. 
Brooks,  the  editor,  fortified  the  grave  misgivings 
of  the  proprietors  over  this  proposition  ;  but  Colonel 
John  McComb  (then  on  the  editorial  staff)  argued 
vehemently  for  Mark,  and  turned  the  scale  in  his 
favour.  While  Mark  was  in  New  York,  he  was 
urged  by  Frank  Fuller,  whom  he  had  known  as 
Territorial  Governor  of  Utah,  to  deliver  a  lecture 
— in  order  to  establish  his  reputation  on  the  Atlantic 
coast.  Fuller,  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  Mark 
Twain,  overcame  all  objections,  and  engaged  Cooper 
Union  for  the  occasion.  Though  few  tickets  were 
sold,  Fuller  cleverly  succeeded  in  packing  the  hall 
by  sending  out  a  multitude  of  complimentary 
tickets  to  the  school-teachers  of  New  York  City  and 
the  adjacent  territory.  That  lecture  proved  to  be  a 
supreme  success — Mark's  reputation  as  a  lecturer 
on  the  Atlantic  coast  was  assured. 

On  June  10,  1867,  the  Quaker  City  set  sail  for  its 
Oriental  tour.  It  bore  on  board  a  comparatively 
unknown  person  of  the  name  of  Clemens,  who,  in 
applying  for  passage,  represented  himself  to  be  a 
Baptist  minister  in  ill-health  from  San  Francisco  ! 


THE  MAN  55 

It  brought  back  a  celebrity,  destined  to  become 
famous  throughout  the  world.  Prior  to  sailing  he 
arranged  to  contribute  letters  to  the  New  York 
Tribune  and  the  New  York  Herald,  as  well  as  to  the 
Alia  California. 

"  His  letters  to  the  Alia  California,"  says  Noah 
Brooks,  "  made  him  famous.  It  was  my  business 
to  prepare  one  of  these  letters  for  the  Sunday  morning 
paper,  taking  the  topmost  letter  from  a  goodly 
pile  that  was  stacked  in  a  pigeon-hole  of  my  desk. 
Clemens  was  an  indefatigable  correspondent,  and 
his  last  letter  was  slipped  in  at  the  bottom  of  a 
tall  stack. 

"  It  would  not  be  quite  accurate  to  say  that 
Mark  Twain's  letters  were  the  talk  of  the  town  ; 
but  it  was  very  rarely  that  readers  of  the  paper  did 
not  come  into  the  office  on  Mondays  to  confide 
to  the  editors  their  admiration  of  the  writer,  and 
their  enjoyment  of  his  weekly  contributions.  The 
California  newspapers  copied  these  letters,  with 
unanimous  approval  and  disregard  of  the  copyrights 
of  author  and  publisher." 

It  was  the  Western  humour,  and  the  quaintly 
untrammelled  American  intelligence,  focussed  upon 
diverse  and  age-encrusted  civilizations,  which  caught 
the  instantaneous  fancy  of  a  vast  public.  It  was 


56  MARK  TWAIN 

a  virgin  field  for  the  humorous  observer ;  Europe 
"had  not  yet  become  the  playground  of  America. 
It  was  rather  a  terra  incognita,  regarded  with  a  sort 
of  reverential  ignorance  by  the  average  American 
tourist.  By  the  range  of  his  humour,  the  per 
tinency  of  his  observation,  and  the  vigour  of  his 
expression  he  awoke  immediate  attention.  And 
he  aroused  a  deeply  sympathetic  response  in  the 
hearts  of  Americans  by  his  manly  and  outspoken 
expression — his  respect  for  the  worthy,  the  admirable, 
the  praiseworthy,  his  scorn  and  detestation  for  the 
spurious,  the  specious  and  the  fraudulent.  In  this 
book,  for  the  first  time,  he  strikes  the  key-note 
of  his  life  and  thought,  which  sounds  so  clearly 
throughout  all  his  later  works.  It  is  the  true  be 
ginning  of  his  career. 

On  his  return  to  the  United  States  in  November, 
he  resumed  his  newspaper  work,  this  time  at  the 
National  Capital.  On  his  arrival  there  he  found  a 
letter  from  Elisha  Bliss,  of  the  American  Publishing 
Company,  proposing  a  volume  recounting  the 
adventures  of  the  "  Excursion,"  to  be  elaborately 
illustrated,  and  sold  by  subscription  on  a  five  per 
cent,  royalty.  He  eagerly  accepted  the  offer  and  set 
to  work  on  his  notes. 

"  I    knew    Mark    Twain    in    Washington,"    says 


THE  MAN  57 

Senator  William  M.  Stewart  of  Nevada,  *in  his 
reminiscences  A  Senator  of  the  Sixties,  "  at  a  time 
when  he  was  without  money.  He  told  me  his 
condition,  and  said  he  was  very  anxious  to  get  out 
his  book.  He  showed  me  his  notes,  and  I  saw  that 
they  would  make  a  great  book,  and  probably  bring 
him  in  a  fortune.  I  promised  that  I  would  '  stake  ' 
him  until  he  had  the  book  written.  I  made  him  a  \ 
clerk  to  my  committee  in  the  senate,  which  paid 
him  six  dollars  per  day ;  then  I  hired  a  man  for 
one  hundred  dollars  per  month  to  do  the  work  !  " 
His  mischievously  extravagant  description  of  Mark 
Twain  at  this  time  is  eminently  worthy  of  record  : 
"  He  was  arrayed  in  a  seedy  suit  which  hung  upon 
his  lean  frame  in  bunches,  with  no  style  worth 
mentioning.  A  sheaf  of  scraggly,  black  hair 
leaked  out  of  a  battered,  old,  slouch  hat,  like 
stuffing  from  an  ancient  Colonial  sofa,  and 
an  evil- smelling  cigar  butt,  very  much  frazzled, 
protruded  from  the  corner  of  his  mouth.  He 
had  a  very  sinister  appearance.  He  was  a  man 
I  had  known  around  the  Nevada  mining  camps 
several  years  before,  and  his  name  was  Samuel/ 
L.  Clemens." 

It  was    during  this    winter  that    Mark  wrote  a 
number    of   humorous    articles    and    sketches — The 


58  MARK  TWAIN 

Facts  in  the  Case  of  the  Great  Beef  Contract,  the 
account  of  his  resignation  as  clerk  of  the  Senate 
Committee  on  Conchology,  and  Riley — Newspaper 
Correspondent.  His  time  was  chiefly  devoted  to 
preparing  the  material  for  his  book  ;  but  finding 
Washington  too  distracting,  he  returned  to  San 
Francisco  and  completed  the  manuscript  there — 
in  July,  1868.  For  a  year  the  publication  of  the 
book  was  delayed,  as  recorded  in  the  Autobiography  ; 
but  it  finally  appeared  in  print  following  Mark's 
indignant  telegram  to  Bliss  that,  if  the  book  was 
not  on  sale  in  twenty-four  hours,  he  would  bring 
suit  for  damages.  Mark  Twain  records  that  in 
nine  months  the  book  had  taken  the  publishing 
house  out  of  debt,  advanced  its  stock  from  twenty- 
five  to  two  hundred,  and  left  seventy  thousand 
dollars  clear  profit.  Eighty-five  thousand  copies 
were  sold  within  sixteen  months,  the  largest  sale  of  a 
four  dollar  book  ever  achieved  in  America  in  so  short 
a  time  up  to  that  date.  It  is,  miraculous  to  relate, 
still  the  leader  in  its  own  special  field — a  "  best 
seller  "  for  forty  years  ! 

The  proprietors  of  the  Alia  California  were  exceed 
ing  wroth  when  they  heard  that  Clemens  was  prepar 
ing  for  publication  the  very  letters  which  they  had 
commissioned  him  to  write  and  had  printed  in  their 


THE  MAN  59 

own  paper.  They  prepared  to  publish  a  cheap  paper- 
covered  edition  of  the  letters,  and  sent  the  American 
Publishing  Co.  a  challenge  in  the  shape  of  an  advance 
notice  of  their  publication.  Clemens  hurried  back 
to  San  Francisco  from  the  East,  and  soon 
convinced  the  proprietors  of  the  Alia  California 
of  the  authenticity  of  his  copyright.  The  paper- 
covered  edition  was  then  and  there  abandoned — 
forever. 

Before  leaving  the  West  to  settle  permanently 
in  the  East,  Mark  Twain  was  associated  for  a  short 
time  with  the  Overland  Monthly,  edited  by  Bret 
Harte.  In  his  review  of  The  Innocents  Abroad, 
Harte  asserted  that  Clemens  deserved  "  to  rank 
foremost  among  Western  humorists  "  ;  but  he  was 
grievously  disappointed  in  the  first  few  contributions 
from  Clemens  to  the  Overland  Monthly — notably  By 
Rail  through  France  (later  incorporated  in  The 
Innocents  Abroad) — because  of  their  perfect  gravity. 
At  last,  A  Mediaeval  Romance — a  story  which 
has  been  said  to  contain  the  germ  of  A  Con 
necticut  Yankee,  because  of  its  burlesque  of 
medievalism — won  the  enthusiastic  approval  of 
Bret  Harte. 

From  this  time  forward,  Samuel  L.  Clemens  is 
seen  in  a  new  environment,  in  association  with  new 


60  MARK  TWAIN 

ideas  and  a  new  civilization.  The  history  of  this 
second  period  does  not  fall  within  the  scope  of  the 
present  work.  It  has  just  been  narrated  with 
brilliancy  and  charm  by  his  close  associate  and 
most  intimate  friend,  Mr.  William  Dean  Howells, 
in  his  admirable  book  My  Mark  Twain.  In  the 
subsequent  portion  of  the  present  work  attention 
will  be  directed  solely  to  those  features  of  Mark 
Twain's  life  which  have  a  direct  bearing  upon  his 
career  as  a  man  of  letters,  and  which  throw 
into  relief  the  progressive  development  of  his 
genius. 

The  South  and  the  West  contributed  to  Mark 
Twain's  development,  and  added  to  his  store  of 
vital  experience,  in  greater  measure  than  all  the 
other  influences  of  his  life  combined.  From  the 
inexhaustible  well  of  those  experiences  he  drew 
ever  fresh  contributions  for  the  satisfaction  of  the 
world.  His  mind  was  stocked  with  the  rich,  crude 
ore  of  early  experience — the  romance  and  the  reality 
of  a  life  full  of  prismatic  variations  of  colour.  The 
civilization  of  the  East,  its  culture  and  refinement, 
tempered  the  genius  of  Mark  Twain  in  conformity 
with  the  indispensable  criteria  of  classic  art.  Under 
the  broadening  influence  of  its  persistent  nationalism, 
he  became  more  deeply,  more  profoundly,  imbued 


THE  MAN  61 

with  the  comprehensive  ideals  of  American  democ 
racy.  He  never  lost  the  first  fine  virginal  spontaneity 
or*  His  native  style,  never  weakened  in  the  vigour 
of  his  thought  or  in  the  primitiveness  of  his  expression, 
His  contact  with  the  East  compassed  the  liberation 
of  that  vast  fund  of  stored-up  early  experiences, 
acquired  through  grappling  with  life  in  many  a 
rude  encounter. 

Out  of  its  own  life,  the  East  never  contributed  to 
Mark  Twain's  works,  in  any  appreciably  momentous 
way,  either  volume  or  immensity  of  fertile,  suggestive  . 
human  experience.  If  we  eliminate  from  the  list 
of  Mark  Twain's  works  those  books  which  have 
their  roots  deep  set  in  the  soil  of  South  and  West, 
we  eliminate  the  most  priceless  assets  of  his  art. 
Indeed,  it  may  be  doubted  whether,  were  those 
works  struck  from  the  catalogue  of  his  contributions, 
Mark  Twain  could  justly  rank  as  a  great  genius. 
To  his  association  with  the  South  and  the  Southwest 
are  due  Tom  Sawyer,  Huckleberry  Finn,  Pudd'nhead 
Wilson,  and  Life  on  the  Mississippi.  The  Jumping 
Frog  and  Roughing  It  belong  peculiarly  to  the 
West,  and  even  The  Innocents  Abroad  falls  wholly 
within  the  period  of  Mark  Twain's  influence  by 
the  West,  its  standards,  outlook,  and  localized  view 
point. 


62  MARK  TWAIN 

Colonel  Mulberry  Sellers  is  a  veritably  human 
type,  the  embodiment,  laughably  lovable,  of  a 
temperamental  phase  of  American  character  in  the 
course  of  the  national  development.  But  The  Gilded 
Age  has  long  since  disappeared  from  that  small 
but  tremendously  significant  group  of  works  which 
are  tentatively  destined  to  rank  as  classics.  Much 
as  I  enjoy  the  satiric  comedy  of  A  Yankee  in  King 
Arthur's  Court,  I  have  always  felt  that  it  set  before 
Europe  an  American  type  which  is  neither  elevating 

nor    inspiring — nor    national.       It    tends     to     the 
\/ 

gratification  of  England  and  Europe,  even  in  the 
face  of  its  democratic  demolition  of  feudalistic 
survival,  by  sealing  a  certain  cheap  type  of  vulgarity 
with  the  national  stamp.  One  must,  nevertheless, 
confess  with  regret  that  this  type  is  the  embodiment 
of  an  "  ideal  "  still  only  too  commonly  cherished 
in  America.  The  national  type,  I  take  it,  is  found 
in  such  characters  as  Lincoln  and  Phillips  Brooks, 
in  Lee  and  Henry  W.  Grady,  in  Charles  W.  Eliot 
and  Edwin  A.  Alderman,  and  not  in  a  provincial 
Connecticut  Yankee,  jovial  and  whole-hearted 
though  he  be.  I  say  this  without  forgetting  or 
minimizing  for  a  moment  the  art  displayed  in  effecting 
the  devastating  and  inimitably  humorous  contrast 
of  a  present  with  a  remotely  past  civilization.  Joan 


THE  MAN  63 

of  Arc  has  no  local  association,  being  a  pure  work 
of  the  heart,  the  chivalric  impulse  of  a  noble  spirit. 
The  Man  that  Corrupted  Hadleyburg,  viewed  from 
any  standpoint,  is  a  masterpiece  ;  but  its  significance 
lies,  not  in  the  locality  of  its  setting,  but  in  the 
universality  of  its  moral. 

In  a  word,  it  was  the  East  which  broadened  and 
universalized  the  spirit  of  Mark  Twain.  We  shall 
see,  later  on,  that  it  steadily  fostered  in  him  a  spirit 
of  true  nationalism  and  hardy  democracy.  But 
it  was  the  South  and  the  West  which  lavishly  gave 
him  of  their  most  priceless  riches,  and  thereby 
created  in  Mark  Twain  an  unique  and  incomparable 
genius,  the  veritable  type  and  embodiment  of  their 
inalienably  individual  life  and  civilization.  This 
first  phase  of  the  life  of  Mark  Twain  has  been  so 
strongly  stressed  here,  because  the  first  half  of  his 
life  has  always  seemed  to  me  to  have  been  a  period 
of — shall  I  say  ? — God-appointed  preparation  for 
the  most  significant  and  lastingly  permanent 
work  of  the  latter  half,  namely,  the  narration 
of  the  incidents  of  early  experience,  and  the 
imaginative  reminting  of  the  gold  of  that  ex 
perience. 

One  has  only  to  read  Mark  Twain's  works 
to  learn  the  real  history  of  his  life.  There  were 


64  MARK  TWAIN 

momentous  episodes  in  the  latter  half  of  his 
career ;  but  they  were  concerned  with  his  life 
rather  than  with  his  art.  We  cannot,  indeed, 
say  what  or  how  profound  is  the  effect  of  life 
and  experience  on  art.  There  was  the  happy 
marriage,  the  tragic  losses  of  wife  and  children. 
There  were  the  associations  with  the  culture  and 
art- circles  of  America  and  Europe — New  England, 
New  York,  Berlin,  Vienna,  London,  Glasgow ;  the 
academic  degrees — Missouri,  Yale ;  finally  ancient 
Oxford  for  the  first  time  conferring  the  coveted 
honour  of  its  degree  upon  a  humorist;  the  honours 
his  own  country  delighted  to  bestow  upon  him. 
And  there  too  was  that  gallant  struggle  to  pay  off 
a  tremendous  debt,  begun  at  sixty — and  accomplished 
one  year  sooner  than  he  expected — after  the  most 
spectacular  and  remarkable  lecture  tour  in  history. 
The  beautiful  chivalric  spirit  of  this  great  soul 
shone  brightest  in  disaster.  He  insisted  that  it  was 
his  wife  who  refused  to  compromise  his  debts  for 
forty  cents  on  the  dollar — that  it  was  she  who 
declared  it  must  be  dollar  for  dollar ;  and  when  a 
fund  was  raised  by  his  admirers  to  assist  in  lightening 
his  burden,  that  it  was  his  wife  who  refused  to  accept 
it,  though  he  was  willing  enough  to  accept  it  as  a 
welcome  relief. 


THE  MAN  65 

As  an  American,  I  can  say  nothing  more  signifi 
cantly  characteristic  of  the  man  than  that  he  was 
a  good  citizen.  He  possessed  in  rich  measure  the 
consciousness  of  personal  responsibility  for  the 
standards,  government,  and  ideals  of  his  town,  his 
city,  and  his  country.  Civic  conscientiousness  burned 
strong  within  him ;  and  he  fought  to  develop  and 
to  maintain  breadth  of  public  view  and  sanity  of 
popular  ideals.  Blind  patriotism  was  impossible 
for  this  great  American  :  he  exposed  the  shallow- 
ness  of  popular  enthusiasms  and  the  narrowness 
of  rampant  spread-eagleism,  without  regard  for 
consequence  to  himself  or  his  popularity.  What  a 
tribute  to  his  personality  that,  instead  of  suffering, 
he  gained  in  popularity  by  his  honest  and  down 
right  outspokenness !  He  wielded  the  lash  of  his 
bitter  scorn  and  fearful  irony  upon  the  wrong-doer, 
the  hypocrite,  the  fraud  ;  and  aroused  public  opinion 
to  impatience  with  public  abuse,  open  offence,  and 
official  discourtesy. 

Samuel  Langhorne  Clemens  impressed  me  as  the 
most  complete  and  human  individual  I  have  ever 
known.  He  was  not  a  great  thinker ;  his 
views  were  not  "  advanced."  The  glory  of  his 
temperament  was  its  splendid  sanity,  balance,  and 
normality.  The  homeliest  virtues  of  life  were  his — 


66  MARK  TWAIN 

the  republican  virtue  of  simplicity ;  the  domestic 
virtue  of  personal  purity  and  passionately  simple 
regard  for  the  sanctity  of  the  marriage  bond ; 
the  civic  virtue  of  public  honesty  ;  the  business 
virtue  of  stainless  private  honour.  Mark  Twain 
was  one  of  the  supreme  literary  geniuses  of  his 
time.  But  he  was  something  even  more  than  this. 
He  was  not  simply  a  great  genius :  he  was  a  great 
man. 


III.  THE  HUMORIST 


"  Exhilaration  can  be  infinite,  like  sorrow  ;  a  joke  can  be  so 
big  that  it  breaks  the  roof  of  the  stars.  By  simply  going 
on  being  absurd,  a  thing  can  become  godlike;  there  is  but 
one  step  from  the  ridiculous  to  the  sublime." 

GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  :  Charles  Dickens. 


THE  HUMORIST 

NOT  without  wide  significance  in  its  bearing  upon 
the  general  outlines  of  contemporary  literature  is 
the  circumstance  that  Mark  Twain  served  his 
apprenticeship  to  letters  in  the  high  school  of 
journalism.  Like  his  contemporaries,  Artemus 
Ward  and  Bret  Harte,  he  first  found  free  play  for 
his  comic  intransigeance  in  the  broad  freedom  of 
the  journal  for  the  masses.  Brilliant  as  he  was, 
Artemus  Ward  seemed  most  effective  only  when 
he  spoke  in  weird  vernacular  through  the  grotesque 
mouthpiece  of  his  own  invention.  Bret  Harte 
sacrificed  more  and  more  of  the  native  flavour  of 
his  genius  in  his  progressive  preoccupation  with  the 
more  sophisticated  refinements  of  the  purely  literary. 
Mark  Twain  never  lost  the  ruddy  glow  of  his  first 
inspiration,  and  his  style,  to  the  very  end,  remained 
as  it  began — journalistic,  untamed,  primitive. 

Both  Rudyard  Kipling  and  Bernard  Shaw,  who 
like  Mark  Twain  have  achieved  comprehensive 
international  reputations,  have  succeeded  in  pre 
serving  the  early  vigour  and  telling  directness 


v 


70  MARK  TWAIN 

acquired  in  journalistic  apprenticeship.  It  was  by 
the  crude,  almost  barbaric,  cry  of  his  journalese  that 
Rudyard  Kipling  awoke  the  world  with  a  start. 
That  trenchant  and  forthright  style  which  imparts 
such  an  air  of  heightened  verisimilitude  to  his  plays, 
Bernard  Shaw  acquired  in  the  ranks  of  the  new 
journalism.  "  The  writer  who  aims  at  producing 
the  platitudes  which  are  '  not  for  an  age,  but  for 
all  time,'"  says  Bernard  Shaw,  "has  his  reward 
in  being  unreadable  in  all  ages ;  whilst  Plato  and 
Aristophanes  trying  to  knock  some  sense  into  the 
Athens  of  their  day,  Shakespeare  peopling  that 
same  Athens  with  Elizabethan  mechanics  and 
Warwickshire  hunts,  Ibsen  photographing  the  local 
doctors  and  vestrymen  of  a  Norwegian  parish, 
Carpaccio  painting  the  life  of  St.  Ursula  exactly  as 
if  she  were  a  lady  living  in  the  next  street  to  him, 
are  still  alive  and  at  home  everywhere  among  the 
dust  and  ashes  of  many  thousands  of  academic, 
punctilious,  most  archseologically  correct  men  of 
letters  and  art  who  spent  their  lives  haughtily 
avoiding  the  journalists'  vulgar  obsession  with  the 
ephemeral."  Mark  Twain  began  his  career  by 
studying  the  people  and  period  he  knew  in  relation 
to  his  own  life.  Jamestown,  Hannibal,  and  Virginia 
City,  the  stately  Mississippi,  and  the  orgiastic, 


THE  HUMORIST  71 

uproarious  life  of  Western  prairie,  mountain,  and 
gulch  start  to  life  and  live  again  in  the  pages  of  his 
books.  Colonel  Sellers,  in  the  main  correct  but 
"  stretched  a  little  "  here  and  there ;  Tom  Sawyer, 
the  "  magerful "  hero  of  boyhood  ;  the  shrewd  and 
kindly  Aunt  Polly,  drawn  from  his  own  mother ; 
Huck  Finn,  with  the  tender  conscience  and  the 
gentle  heart — these  and  many  another  were  drawn 
from  the  very  life.  In  writing  of  his  time  d  propos 
of  himself,  Mark  Twain  succeeded  in  telling  the 
truth  about  humanity  in  general  and  for  any  time. 
In  the  main — though  there  are  noteworthy  ex 
ceptions — Mark  Twain's  works  originated  funda 
mentally  in  the  facts  of  his  own  life.  He  is  a  master  \ 
humorist — which  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  J 
he  is  a  master  psychologist  with  the  added  gift  of 
humour — because  he  looked  upon  himself  always 
as  a  complete  and  well-rounded  repository  of  uni 
versally  human  characteristics.  Humanus  sum  ;  et 
nil  humanum  mihi  alienum  est  —  this  might  well 
have  served  for  his  motto.  It  was  his  conviction 
that  the  American  possessed  no  unique  and  peculiar 
human  characteristics  differentiating  him  from  the 
rest  of  the  world.  In  the  same  way,  he  regarded 
himself  as  possessing  no  unique  or  peculiar  human 
characteristics  differentiating  him  from  the  rest  of 


72  MARK  TWAIN 

the  human  race.  Like  Omar  he  might  have  said  : 
"I  myself  am  Heaven  and  Hell"  —  for  within 
himself  he  recognized,  in  some  form,  at  higher  or 
lower  power,  every  feature,  trait,  instinct,  char 
acteristic  of  which  a  human  being  is  capable.  The 
last  half  century  of  his  life,  as  he  himself  said  in  his 
Autobiography,  had  been  constantly  and  faithfully 
devoted  to  the  study  of  the  human  race.  His 
knowledge  came  from  minute  self-examination — 
for  he  regarded  himself  as  the  entire  human  race 
compacted  together.  It  was  by  concentrating  his 
attention  upon  himself,  by  recognizing  jm.  himself 
the  quintessential  type  of  the  race,  that  he  succeeded 
in  producing  works  of  such  pure  naturalness  and 

(utter  verity.  A  humour  which  is  at  bottom  good 
humour  is  always  contagious  ;  but  there  is  a  deeper 
and  more  universal  appeal  which  springs  from  genial 
and  unaffected  representation  of  the  human  species, 
of  the  universal  Genus  Homo. 

It  has  been  said,  by  foreign  critics,  that  the  in 
tellectual  life  of  America  in  general  takes  its  cue 
from  the  day,  whilst  the  intellectual  life  of  Europe 
derives  from  history.  If  American  literature  be 
really  "  Journalism  under  exceptionally  favourable 
conditions,"  as  defined  by  the  Danish  critic,  Johannes 
V.  Jensen,  then  must  Mark  Twain  be  a  typical 


THE  HUMORIST  73 

product  of  American  literature.  A  certain  modicum 
of  truth  may  rest  in  this  startling  and  seemingly 
uncomplimentary  definition.  Interpreted  liberally, 
it  may  be  taken  to  mean  that  America  finds  her 
key  to  the  future  in  the  immediate  vital  present, 
rather  than  in  a  remote  and  hazy  past.  Mark 
Twain  was  a  great  creative  genius  because  he  saw 
himself,  and  so  saw  human  nature,  in  the  strong, 
searching  light  of  the  living  present.  He  is  the 
greatest  genius  evolved  by  natural  selection  out  of 
the  ranks  of  American  journalism.  Crude,  rudi 
mentary  and  boisterous  as  his  early  writing  was, 
at  times  provincial  and  coarse,  it  bore  upon 
its  face  the  fresh  stamp  of  contemporary 
actuality. 

To  the  American  of  to-day,  it  is  not  a  little  ex 
asperating  to  be  placidly  assured  by  our  British 
critics  that  America  is  sublimely  unconscious  that 
her  childhood  is  gone.  And  this  gay  paradox  is 
less  arresting  than  the  asseveration  that  America 
is  lacking  in  humour  because  she  is  lacking  in  self- 
knowledge.  There  is  a  certain  grimly  comic  irony 
in  this  commiseration  with  us,  on  the  part  of  our 
British  critics,  for  our  failure  joyously  to  realize 
our  old  age,  which  they  would  have  us  believe  is 
a  sort  of  premature  senescence  and  decay.  The 


74  MARK  TWAIN 

New  World  is  pitied  for  her  failure  to  know  without 
illusion  the  futility  of  the  hurried  pursuit  of  wealth, 
of  the  passion  for  extravagant  opulence  and  in 
ordinate  display,  of  all  the  hostages  youth  in  America 
eternally  gives  to  old  age.  "  America  has  produced 
great  artists,"  admits  Mr.  Gilbert  Chesterton.  Yet 
he  maintains  that  "  that  fact  most  certainly  proves 
that  she  is  full  of  a  fine  futility  and  the  end  of  all 
things.  Whatever  the  American  men  of  genius 
are,  they  are  not  young  gods  making  a  young  world. 
Is  the  art  of  Whistler  a  brave,  barbaric  art,  happy 
and  headlong  ?  Does  Mr.  Henry  James  infect  us 
with  the  spirit  of  a  schoolboy  ?  .  .  .  Out  of  America 
has  come  a  sweet  and  startling  cry,  as  unmistakable 
as  the  cry  of  a  dying  man."  This  sweet  and  startling 
cry  is  less  startling  than  the  obvious  reflection  that 
Mr.  Chesterton  has  chosen  to  illustrate  his  ludicrous 
paradox,  the  two  American  geniuses  who  have  lived 
outside  their  own  country,  absorbed  the  art  ideals 
of  the  older,  more  sophisticated  civilizations,  and 
lost  touch  with  the  youthful  spirit,  the  still  almost 
barbaric  violence,  the  ongoing  rush  and  progress 
of  America.  It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  Mr.  James 
has  always  maintained  that  Mark  Twain  was  capable 
of  amusing  only  very  primitive  persons ;  and  Whistler, 
with  his  acid  diablerie,  was  wholly  alien  in  spirit  to 


THE  HUMORIST  75 

the  boisterous  humour  of  Mark  Twain.  That  other 
brilliant  but  incoherent  interpreter  of  American 
life,  Mr.  Charles  Whibley,  bound  to  the  presupposed 
paradox  of  America's  pathetic  senescence  and  total 
deficiency  in  humour,  blithely  gives  away  his  case 
in  the  vehement  assertion  that  America's  greatest 
national  interpreter  is — Mark  Twain  ! 

To  the  general,  Mark  Twain  is,  first  and  foremost 
and  exclusively,  the  humorist — with  his  shrieking 
Philistinism,  his  dominant  sense  for  the  colossally 
incongruous,  his  spontaneous  faculty  for  staggering**' 
ludicrous  contrast.  To  the  reflective,  Mark  Twairi 
subsumed  within  himself  a  "  certain  surcharge  and 
overplus  of  power,  a  buoyancy,  and  a  sense  of 
conquest "  which  typified  the  youth  of  America. 
It  is  memorable  that  he  breathed  in  his  youth  the 
bracing  air  of  the  prairie,  shared  the  collective 
ardour  of  the  Argonauts,  felt  the  rising  thrill  of 
Western  adventure,  and  expressed  the  crude  and 
manly  energy  of  navigation,  exploration,  and  the 
daring  hazard  for  new  fortune.  To  those  who  knew 
him  in  personal  intimacy,  the  quality  that  was 
outstanding,  omnipresent  and  eternally  ineradicable 
from  his  nature  was — paradoxical  as  it  may  sound — 
not  humour,  not  wit,  not  irony,  not  a  thousand  other 
terms  that  might  be  associated  with  his  name,  but 


76  MARK  TWAIN 

— the  spirit  of  eternal  youth.  It  is  comprehensively 
significant  and  conclusive  that,  to  the  day  of  her 
death,  Mrs.  Clemens  never  called  her  husband  any 
thing  but  the  bright  nickname — "  Youth."  Mark 
Twain  is  great  as  humorist,  admirable  as  teller  of 
tales,  pungent  as  stylist.  But  he  has  achieved 
another  sort  of  eminence  that  is  peculiarly  gratifying 
to  Americans.  "  They  distinguish  in  his  writings," 
says  an  acute  French  critic,  "  exalted  and  sublimated 
by  his  genius,  their  national  qualities  of  youth  and 
of  gaiety,  of  force  and  of  faith  ;  they  love  his  philos 
ophy,  at  once  practical  and  high-minded.  They 
are  fond  of  his  simple  style,  animated  with  verve 
and  spice,  thanks  to  which  his  work  is  accessible 
to  every  class  of  readers.  They  think  he  describes 
his  contemporaries  with  such  an  art  of  distinguishing 
their  essential  traits,  that  he  manages  to  evoke,  to 
create  even,  characters  and  types  of  eternal  verity. 
They  profess  for  Mark  Twain  the  same  sort  of 
vehement  admiration  that  we  have  in  France  for 
Balzac." 

Whilst  Mark  Twain  has  solemnly  averred  that 
humour  is  a  subject  which  has  never  had  much 
interest  for  him,  it  is  nothing  more  than  a  common 
place  to  say  that  it  is  as  a  humorist,  and  as  a  humorist 
only,  that  the  world  seems  to  persist  in  regarding 


THE  HUMORIST 

him.  The  philosophy  of  his  early  life  was  what 
George  Meredith  has  aptly  termed  the  "  philosophy 
of  the  Broad  Grin."  Mr.  Gilbert  Chesterton  once 
said  that  "  American  humour,  neither  unfathomably 
absurd  like  the  French,  nor  sharp  and  sensible  and 
full  of  the  realities  of  life  like  the  Scotch,  is  simply 
the  humour  of  imagination.  It  consists  in  piling 
towers  on  towers  and  mountains  on  mountains  ;  of 
heaping  a  joke  up  to  the  stars  and  extending  it 
the  end  of  the  world."  This  partial  and  somewhat 
conventional  foreign  conception  of  American  humour 
is  admirably  descriptive  of  the  cumulative  and 
"  sky-breaking  "  humour  of  the  early  Mark  Twain. 
Then  no  exaggeration  was  too  absurd  for  him,  no 
phantasrn  too  unreal,  no  climax  too  extreme. 

The  Jiumouh  of  that  day  was  the  humour  bred 
of  a  barbaric  freedom  and  a  lawless,  untrammelled 
life.  Mark  Twain  grew  up  with  a  civilization  but 
one  remove  from  barbarism ;  supremacy  in  marks 
manship  was  the  arbiter  of  argument ;  the  greatest 
joke  was  the  discomfiture  of  a  fellow- creature.  In 
the  laughter  of  these  wild  Westerners  was  something 
at  once  rustic  and  sanguinary.  The  refinements 
of  art  and  civilization  seemed  effeminate,  artificial, 
to  these  rude  spirits,  who  laughed  uproariously  at 
one  another,  plotted  dementedly  in  circumvention  of 


78  MARK  TWAIN 

each  other's  plans,  and  gloried  in  their  defiance  of  both 
man  and  God.  Deep  in  their  hearts  they  cherished 
tenderness  for  woman,  sympathy  for  the  weak  and 
the  afflicted,  and  generosity  indescribable.  And 
yet  they  prided  themselves  upon  their  barbaric 
rusticity,  glorying  in  a  native  cunning  bred  of  their 
wild  life  and  sharpened  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 
What,  after  all,  is  The  Jumping  Frog  but  the  elaborate 
narrative,  in  native  vernacular,  of  a  shrewd  practical 
joke  ?  As  Mark  Twain  first  heard  it,  this  story 
was  a  solemn  recital  of  an  interesting  incident  in 
the  life  of  Angel's  Camp.  It  was  Mark  Twain  who 
"  created  "  the  story  :  he  endowed  with  the  comic 
note  of  whimsicality  that  imaginative  realization 
of  une  chose  vue,  which  went  round  the  world. 
The  humour  of  rustic  shrewdness  in  criticism  of  art, 
so  elaborately  exploited  in  The  Innocents  Abroad, 
was  displayed,  perhaps  invented,  by  Mark  Twain 
in  the  early  journalistic  days  in  San  Francisco. 
In  The  Golden  Era  an  excellent  example  is  found 
in  the  following  observations  upon  a  celebrated 
painting  of  Samson  and  Delilah,  then  on  exhibition 
in  San  Francisco : 

"  Now  what  is  the  first  thing  you  see  in  looking 
at  this  picture  down  at  the  Bank  Exchange  ?  Is  it 
the  gleaming  eye  and  fine  face  of  Samson  ?  or  the 


THE  HUMORIST  79 

muscular  Philistine  gazing  furtively  at  the  lovely 
Delilah  ?  or  is  it  the  rich  drapery  ?  or  is  it  the 
truth  to  nature  in  that  pretty  foot  ?  No,  sir.  The 
first  thing  that  catches  the  eye  is  the  scissors  at  her 
feet.  Them  scissors  is  too  modern ;  thar  warn't 

no  scissors  like  them  in  them  days — by  a  d d 

sight." 

That  was  a  brilliant  and  audacious  conception, 
having  the  just  proportion  of  sanguinary  humour, 
embodied  in  Mark  Twain's  offer,  during  his  lecture 
on  the  Sandwich  Islands,  to  show  his  audience 
how  the  cannibals  consume  their  food  —  if  only 
some  lady  would  lend  him  a  live  baby.  There  is 
the  same  wildly  humorous  tactlessness  in  the  delicious 
anecdote  of  Higgins. 

Higgins  was  a  simple  creature,  who  used  to  haul 
rock;  and  on  the  day  Judge  Bagley  fell  down  the 
court-house  steps  and  broke  his  neck,  Higgins  was 
commissioned  to  carry  the  body  in  his  wagon  to  the 
house  of  Mrs.  Bagley  and  break  the  news  to  her  as 
gently  as  possible.  When  he  arrived,  he  shouted 
until  Mrs.  Bagley  came  to  the  door,  and  then  tactfully 
inquired  if  the  Widder  Bagley  lived  there  !  When 
she  indignantly  replied  in  the  negative,  he  gently 
humoured  her  whim ;  and  inquired  next  if  Judge 
Bagley  lived  there.  When  she  replied  that  he  did, 


80  MARK  TWAIN 

Higgins  offered  to  bet  that  he  didn't ;  and  delicately 
inquired  if  the  Judge  were  in.  On  being  assured 
that  he  was  not  in  at  present,  Higgins  triumphantly 
exclaimed  that  he  expected  as  much.  Because — 
he  had  the  old  Judge  curled  up  out  there  in  the 
wagon ;  and  when  Mrs.  Bagley  saw  him,  she  would 
doubtless  admit  that  about  all  that  could  comfort 
the  Judge  now  would  be  an  inquest ! 

Mark  Twain  was  so  fond  of  this  bloody  and  ghastly 
humour  that,  on  one  occasion,  he  utterly  over 
reached  himself  and  suffered  serious  consequences. 
In  the  words  of  his  fellow- journalist,  Dan  De  Quille  : — 

Mark  Twain  was  fond  of  manufacturing  items  of  the  horrible 
style,  but  on  one  occasion  he  overdid  this  business,  and  the 
disease  worked  its  own  cure.  He  wrote  an  account  of  a  terrible 
murder,  supposed  to  have  occurred  at  "  Dutch  Nick's,"  a  station 
on  the  Carson  River,  where  Empire  City  now  stands.  He  made 
a  man  cut  his  wife's  throat  and  those  of  his  nine  children, 
after  which  diabolical  deed  the  murderer  mounted  his  horse, 
cut  his  own  throat  from  ear  to  ear,  rode  to  Carson  City  (a 
distance  of  three  and  a  half  miles)  and  fell  dead  in  front  of 
Peter  Hopkins'  saloon. 

All  the  California  papers  copied  the  item,  and  several  made 
editorial  comment  upon  it  as  being  the  most  shocking  occurrence 
of  the  kind  ever  known  on  the  Pacific  Coast.  Of  course  rival 
Virginia  City  papers  at  once  denounced  the  item  as  a  "  cruel 
and  idiotic  hoax."  They  showed  how  the  publication  of  such 
" shocking  and  reckless  falsehoods"  disgraced  and  injured  the 
State,  and  they  made  it  as  "  sultry  "  as  possible  for  the  Enter 
prise  and  its  "  fool  reporter." 


THE  HUMORIST  81 

When  the  California  papers  saw  all  this  and  found  they  had 
been  sold,  there  was  a  howl  from  Siskiyou  to  San  Diego. 
Some  papers  demanded  the  immediate  discharge  of  the  author 
of  the  item  by  the  Enterprise  proprietors.  They  said  they 
would  never  quote  another  line  from  that  paper  while  the 
reporter  who  wrote  the  shocking  item  remained  on  its  force. 
All  this  worried  Mark  as  I  had  never  before  seen  him  worried. 
Said  he :  "  I  am  being  burned  alive  on  both  sides  of  the 
mountains."  We  roomed  together,  and  one  night,  when  the 
persecution  was  hottest,  he  was  so  distressed  that  he  could  not 
sleep.  He  tossed,  tumbled,  and  groaned  aloud.  So  I  set  to 
work  to  comfort  him.  "  Mark,"  said  I,  "  never  mind  this  bit 
of  a  gale,  it  will  soon  blow  itself  out.  This  item  of  yours  will 
be  remembered  and  talked  about  when  all  your  other  work  is 
forgotten.  The  murder  at  Dutch  Nick's  will  be  quoted  years 
from  now  as  the  big  sell  of  these  times." 

Said  Mark :  "  I  believe  you  are  right ;  I  remember  I 
once  did  a  thing  at  home  in  Missouri,  was  caught  at  it,  and 
worried  almost  to  death.  I  was  a  mere  lad,  and  was  going  to 
school  in  a  little  town  where  I  had  an  uncle  living.  I  at  once 
left  the  town  and  did  not  return  to  it  for  three  years.  When  I 
finally  came  back  I  found  I  was  only  remembered  as  { the  boy 
that  played  the  trick  on  the  schoolmaster.'  " 

Mark  then  told  me  the  story,  began  to  laugh  over  it,  and 
from  that  moment  "  ceased  to  groan."  He  was  not  discharged, 
and  in  less  than  a  month  people  everywhere  were  laughing 
and  joking  about  the  "murder  at  Dutch  Nick's." 

Out  of  that  full,  free  Western  life,  with  its  tre 
mendous  hazards  of  fortune,  its  extravagant  alterna 
tions  from  fabulous  wealth  to  wretched  poverty, 
its  tremendous  exaggerations  and  incredible  contrasts, 
was  evolved  a  humour  as  rugged,  as  mountainous, 
F 


82  MARK  TWAIN 

and  as  altitudinous  as  the  conditions  which  gave  it 
birth.  Mark  Twain  may  be  said  to  have  created, 
and  made  himself  master  of,  this  new  and  fantastic 
humour  which,  in  its  exaggeration  and  elaboration, 
was  without  a  parallel  in  the  history  of  humorous 
narration.  At  times  it  seemed  little  more  than  a 
sort  of  infectious  and  hilarious  nonsense ;  but  in 
reality  it  had  behind  it  all  the  calculation  of  detail 
and  elaboration.  There  was  something  in  it  of  the 
volcanic,  as  if  at  the  bursting  forth  of  some  pent- 
up  force  of  primitive  nature.  It  consisted  in  piling 
Pelion  on  Ossa,  until  the  structure  toppled  over  of 
its  own  weight  and  fell  with  a  stentorian  crash  of 
laughter  which  echoed  among  the  stars.  Whenever 
Mark  Twain  conceived  a  humorous  idea,  he  seemed 
capable  of  extracting  from  it  infinite  complications 
of  successive  and  cumulative  comedy.  This  humour 
seemed  like  the  mental  functionings  of  some  mad, 
yet  inevitably  logical  jester  ;  it  grew  from  more  toi 
more,  from  extravagance  to  extravagance,  until 
reason  itself  tired  and  gave  over.  Such  explosive* 
stories  as  How  I  edited  an  Agricultural  Paper,  A 
Genuine  Mexican  Plug,  the  deciphering  of  the  Horace 
Greeley  correspondence,  The  Facts  in  the  Case  of 
the  Great  Beef  Contract,  and  many  another,  as  Mr. 
Chesterton  has  pointed  out,  have  one  tremendous 


THE  HUMORIST  83 

essential  of  great  art.  "  The  excitement  mounts  up 
perpetually ;  they  grow  more  and  more  comic,  as 
a  tragedy  should  grow  more  and  more  tragic.  The 
rack,  tragic  or  comic,  goes  round  until  something 
breaks  inside  a  man.  In  tragedy  it  is  his  heart, 
or  perhaps  his  stiff  neck.  In  farce  I  do  not  quite 
know  what  it  is — perhaps  his  funny-bone  is  dis 
located  ;  perhaps  his  skull  is  slightly  cracked." 
Mark  Twain's  mountainous  humour,  of  this  early 
type,  never  contains  the  element  of  final  surprise,  y 
of  the  sudden,  the  unexpected,  the  imprevu.  We 
know  what  is  coming,  we  surrender  ourselves  more 
and  more  to  the  mood  of  the  narrator,  holding 
ourselves  in  reserve  until  laughter,  no  longer  to  be 
restrained,  bursts  forth  in  a  torrent  of  undignified 
and  explosive  mirth.  Perhaps  no  better  example 
can  be  given  than  the  description  of  the  sad  fate 
of  the  camel  in  A  Tramp  Abroad. 

In  Syria,  at  the  head-waters  of  the  Jordan,  this 
camel  had  got  hold  of  his  overcoat ;  and  after  he 
finished  contemplating  it  as  an  article  of  apparel, 
he  began  to  inspect  it  as  an  article  of  diet.  In  his 
inimitable  manner,  Mark  describes  the  almost  religious 
ecstasy  of  that  camel  as  it  devoured  his  overcoat 
piecemeal — first  one  sleeve,  then  the  other,  velvet 
collar,  and  finally  the  tails.  All  went  well  until  the 


84  MARK  TWAIN 

camel  struck  a  batch  of  manuscript — containing  some 
of  Mark's  humorous  letters  for  the  home  papers. 
Their  solid  wisdom  soon  began  to  lie  heavy  on  the 
camel's  stomach :  the  jokes  shook  him  until  he 
began  to  gag  and  gasp,  and  finally  he  struck  state 
ments  that  not  even  a  camel  could  swallow  with 
impunity.  He  died  in  horrible  agony  ;  and  Mark 
found  on  examination  that  the  camel  had  choked 
to  death  on  one  of  the  mildest  statements  of  fact 
that  he  had  ever  offered  to  a  trusting  public !  Here 
Mark  gradually  works  up  to  an  anticipated  climax 
by  piling  on  effect  after  effect.  Our  risibility  is 
excited  almost  as  much  by  the  anticipation  of  the 
climax  as  by  the  recital. 

Admirable  instances  of  the  ludicrous  incident,  of 
the  nonsensical  recital,  are  found  in  the  scene  in 
Huckleberry  Finn  dealing  with  the  performance  of 
the  King's  Cameleopard  or  Royal  Nonesuch,  the 
address  on  the  occasion  of  the  dinner  in  honour 
of  the  seventieth  anniversary  of  John  Greenleaf 
Whittier  (an  historic  failure),  and  the  Turkish  bath 
in  The  Innocents  Abroad. 

In  this  prison  filled  with  hot  air,  an  attendant 
sat  him  down  by  a  tank  of  hot  water  and  began  to 
polish  him  all  over  with  a  coarse  mitten.  Soon 
Mark  noticed  a  disagreeable  smell,  and  realized  that 


THE  HUMORIST  85 

the  more  he  was  polished  the  worse  he  smelt.  He 
urged  the  attendant  to  bury  him  without  unnecessary 
delay,  as  it  was  obvious  that  he  couldn't  possibly 
"  keep "  long  in  such  warm  weather.  But  the 
phlegmatic  attendant  paid  no  attention  to  Mark's 
commands  and  continued  to  scrub  with  renewed 
vigour.  Mark's  consternation  changed  to  alarm  when 
he  discovered  that  little  cylinders,  like  macaroni, 
began  to  roll  from  under  the  mitten.  They  were  too 
white  to  be  dirt.  He  felt  that  he  was  gradually  being 
pared  down  to  a  convenient  size.  Realizing  that  it 
would  take  hours  for  the  attendant  to  trim  him  down 
to  the  proper  size,  Mark  indignantly  ordered  him  to 
bring  a  jackplane  at  once  and  get  the  matter  over. 
To  all  his  protests  the  attendant  paid  no  attention 
at  all. 

In  one  of  the  earliest  critical  articles  about  Mark 
Twain,  which  appeared  in  Appleton's  Journal  of 
Literature,  Science  and  Art  for  July  4, 1874,  Mr.  G.  T. 
Ferris  gives  an  excellent  appreciation  of  his  humour. 
"  Of  humour  in  its  highest  phase,"  he  says,  "  perhaps 
Bret  Harte  may  be  accounted  the  most  puissant 
master  among  our  contemporary  American  writers. 
Of  wit,  we  see  next  to  none.  Mark  Twain,  while 
lacking  the  subtilty  and  pathos  of  the  other,  has 
more  breadth,  variety,  and  ease.  His  sketches  of 


86  MARK  TWAIN 

life  are  arabesque  in  their  strange  combinations. 
Bits  of  bright,  serious  description,  both  of  landscape 
and  society,  carry  us  along  till  suddenly  we  stumble  on 
some  master-stroke  of  grotesque  and  irresistible  fun. 
He  understands  the  value  of  repose  in  art.  One 
tires  of  a  page  where  every  sentence  sparkles  with 
points,  and  the  author  is  constantly  attitudinizing 
for  our  amusement.  We  like  to  be  betrayed  into 
laughter  as  much  in  books  as  in  real  life.  It  is  the 
unconscious,  easy,  careless  gait  of  Mark  Twain  that 
makes  his  most  potent  charm.  He  seems  always  to 
be  catering  as  much  to  his  own  enjoyment  as  to  that 
of  the  public.  He  strolls  along  like  a  great  rollicking 
schoolboy,  bent  on  having  a  good  time,  and  deter 
mined  that  his  readers  shall  have  it  with  him." 

Mark  Twain  is  the  most  daring  of  humorists. 
He  takes  his  courage  in  his  hands  for  the  wildest 
flights  of  fancy.  His  humour  is  the  caricature  of 
situations,  rather  than  of  individuals  ;  and  he  is 
not  afraid  to  risk  his  characters  in  colossally  ludicrous 
situations.  His  art  reveals  itself  in  choosing  ludicrous 
situations  which  contain  such  a  strong  colouring 
of  naturalness  that  one's  sense  of  reality  is  not 
outraged,  but  titillated.  Hence  it  is  that  his  humour, 
in  its  earlier  form,  does  not  lend  itself  readily  to 
quotation.  His  early  humour  is  not  epigrammatic, 


THE  HUMORIST  87 

but  cumulative  and  extensive.  Each  scene  is  a 
unit  and  must  appear  as  such.  Andrew  Lang  not 
inaptly  catches  the  note  of  Mark  Twain's  earlier 
manner,  when  he  speaks  of  his  "  almost  Mephis 
tophelean  coolness,  an  unwearying  search  after  the 
comic  sides  of  serious  subjects,  after  the  mean  possi 
bilities  of  the  sublime — these  with  a  native  sense  of 
incongruities  and  a  glorious  vein  of  exaggeration." 

Mark  Twain  began  his  career  as  a  wag  ;  he  rejoiced 
in  being  a  fun-maker.  He  discarded  the  weird 
spellings  and  crude  punning  of  his  American  fore 
runners  ;  his  object  was  not  play  upon  words,  but 
play  upon  ideas.  He  offered  his  public,  as  Frank 
R.  StocFtoiTpointed  out,  the  pure  ore  of  fun.  "  If 
he  puts  his  private  mark  on  it,  it  will  pass  current ; 
it  does  not  require  the  mint  stamp  of  the  schools  of 
humour.  He  is  never  afraid  of  being  laughed  at." 
Indeed,  that  is  a  large  part  of  his  stock-in-trade  ; 
for  throughout  his  entire  career,  nothing  seemed  to 
give  him  so  much  pleasure — though  it  is  one  of  the 
lowest  forms  of  humour — as  making  fun  of  himself. 
In  describing  two  monkeys  that  got  into  his  room 
at  Delhi,  he  said  that  when  he  awoke,  one  of  them 
was  before  the  glass  brushing  his  hair,  and  the  other 
one  had  his  notebook,  and  was  reading  a  page  of 
humorous  notes  and  crying.  He  didn't  mind  the 


88  MARK  TWAIN 

one  with  the  hair-brush  ;  but  the  conduct  of  the 
other  one  cut  him  to  the  heart.  He  never  forgave 
that  monkey.  His  apostrophe,  with  tears,  over  the 
tomb  of  Adam — only  to  be  fully  appreciated  in 
connexion  with  his  satiric  indignation  over  the  drivel 
of  the  maudlin  Mr.  Grimes,  who  "  never  bored,  but 
he  struck  water  " — is  an  admirable  example  of  the 
mechanical  fooling  of  self-ridicule. 

In  his  penetrating  study,  Mark  Twain  a  Century 
Hence,  published  at  the  time  of  Mr.  Clemens'  death, 
Professor  H.  T.  Peck  makes  this  observation :  "  We 
must  judge  Mark  Twain  as  a  humorist  by  the  very 
best  of  all  he  wrote  rather  than  by  the  more  dubious 
productions,  in  which  we  fail  to  see  at  every  moment 
the  winning  qualities  and  the  characteristic  form  of 
this  very  interesting  American.  As  one  would  not 
judge  of  Tennyson  by  his  dramas,  nor  Thackeray 
by  his  journalistic  chit-chat,  nor  Sir  Walter  Scott 
by  those  romances  which  he  wrote  after  his  fecundity 
had  been  exhausted,  so  we  must  not  judge  Mark 
Twain  by  the  dozen  or  more  specimens  which  belong 
to  the  later  period,  when  he  was  ill  at  ease  and  growing 
old.  Let  us  rather  go  back  with  a  sort  of  joy  to 
what  he  wrote  when  he  did  so  with  spontaneity, 
when  his  fun  was  as  natural  to  him  as  breathing, 
and  when  his  humour  was  all  American  humour — 


THE  HUMORIST  89 

not  like  that  of  Juvenal  or  Hierocles — acrid,  or  devoid 
of  anything  individual  —  but  brimming  over  with 
exactly  the  same  rich  irresponsibility  which  belonged 
to  Steele  and  Lamb  and  Irving.  It  may  seem  odd 
to  group  a  son  of  the  New  World  and  of  the  great 
West  with  those  earlier  classic  figures  who  have  been 
mentioned  here ;  yet  upon  analysis  it  will  be  dis 
covered  that  the  humour  of  Mark  Twain  is  at  least 
first  cousin  to  that  which  produced  Sir  Roger  de 
Coverley  and  Rip  Van  Winkle  and  The  Stout 
Gentleman." 

The  details  of  the  Gambetta  -  Fourtou  duel,  in 
which  Mark  played  a  somewhat  frightened  second, 
have  furnished  untold  amusement  to  thousands. 
And  his  description  of  the  inadvertent  faux  pas  he 
committed  at  his  first  public  lecture  is  humorous 
for  any  age  and  society.  The  sign  announcing  the 
lecture  read — "  Doors  open  at  7i.  The  Trouble  will 
begin  at  8."  For  three  days,  Mark  had  been  in  a 
state  of  frightful  suspense.  Once  his  lecture  had 
seemed  humorous  ;  but  as  the  day  approached,  it 
seemed  to  him  to  be  but  the  dreariest  of  fooling, 
without  a  vestige  of  real  fun.  He  was  so  panic- 
stricken  that  he  persuaded  three  of  his  friends,  who 
were  giants  in  stature,  genial  and  stormy  voiced,  to 
act  as  claquers  and  pound  loudly  at  the  faintest 


90  MARK  TWAIN 

suspicion  of  a  joke.  He  bribed  Sawyer,  a  half-drunk 
man,  who  had  a  laugh  hung  on  a  hair-trigger,  to 
get  off,  naturally  and  easily  during  the  course  of  the 
evening,  as  many  laughs  as  he  could.  He  begged  a 
popular  citizen  and  his  wife  to  take  a  conspicuous 
seat  in  a  box,  so  that  everybody  could  see  them. 
He  explained  that  when  he  needed  help,  he  would 
turn  toward  her  and  smile,  as  a  signal,  that  he  had 
given  birth  to  an  obscure  joke.  Then,  if  ever, 
was  her  time — not  to  investigate,  but  to  respond ! 

The  fateful  night  found  him  in  the  depths  of 
dejection.  But  heartened  up  by  a  crowded  house, 
full  even  to  the  aisles,  he  bravely  set  in  and  proceeded 
to  capture  the  house.  His  claquers  hammered  madly 
whenever  the  very  feeblest  joke  showed  its  head. 
Sawyer  supported  their  herculean  efforts  with  bursts 
of  stentorian  laughter.  As  Mark  explained,  not 
without  a  touch  of  pride,  inferior  jokes  never  fared 
so  royally  before.  But  his  hour  of  humiliation  was 
at  hand.  On  delivering  a  bit  of  serious  matter  with 
impressive  unction,  to  which  the  audience  listened 
with  rapt  interest,  he  glanced  involuntarily,  as  if 
for  her  approval,  at  his  friend  in  the  box.  He  re 
membered  the  compact,  but  it  was  too  late — he 
smiled  in  spite  of  himself.  Forth  came  her  ringing 
laugh,  peal  after  peal,  which  touched  off  the  whole 


THE  HUMORIST  91 

audience :  the  explosion  was  immense !  Sawyer 
choked  with  laughter,  and  the  bludgeons  performed 
like  pile-drivers.  The  little  morsel  of  pathos  was 
ruined ;  but  what  matter,  so  long  as  the  audience 
took  it  as  an  intentional  joke,  and  applauded  it  with 
unparalleled  enthusiasm.  Mark  wisely  let  it  go 
at  that ! 

Reading  through  The  Innocents  Abroad  after 
many  years,  I  find  that  it  has  not  lost  its  power  to 
provoke  the  most  side-splitting  laughter ;  and  the 
same  may  be  said  of  A  Tramp  Abroad  and  Following 
the  Equator,  which,  whilst  not  so  boisterously  comi 
cal,  exhibit  greater  mastery  and  restraint.  His  own 
luck,  as  Mark  Twain  observed  on  one  occasion, 
had  been  curious  all  his  literary  life.  He  never 
could  tell  a  lie  that  anybody  would  doubt,  nor  a 
truth  that  anybody  would  believe.  Could  there 
be  a  more  accurate  or  more  concise  definition  of  the 
effect  of  his  writings,  in  especial  of  his  travel  notes  ? 
Like  his  mother,  he  too  never  used  large  words, 
but  he  had  a  natural  gift  for  making  small  ones 
do  effective  work.  How  delightfully  human  is 
his  comment  on  the  vagaries  of  woman's  shop 
ping  !  Human  nature  he  found  very  much  the 
same  all  over  the  world ;  and  he  felt  that  it  was  so 
much  like  his  dear  native  home  to  see  a  Venetian 


92  MARK  TWAIN 

lady  go  into  a  store,  buy  ten  cents'  worth  of  blue 
ribbon,  and  then  have  it  sent  home  in  a  scow. 
It  was  such  little  touches  of  nature  as  this  which, 
as  he  said,  moved  him  to  tears  in  those  far-off  lands. 
In  speaking  of  Palestine,  he  says  that  its  holy  places 
are  not  as  deliriously  beautiful  as  the  books  paint 
them.  Indeed,  he  asserts  that  if  one  be  calm  and 
resolute,  he  can  look  on  their  beauty  and  live  !  He 
bequeathed  his  rheumatism  to  Baden-Baden.  It 
was  little,  but  it  was  all  he  had  to  give.  His  only 
regret  was  that  he  could  not  leave  something  more 
catching. 

There  is  nothing  better  in  all  of  The  Innocents 
Abroad  than  his  analysis  of  the  theological  hierarchy 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  Disclaiming  all 
intention  to  be  frivolous,  irreverent  or  blasphemous, 
he  solemnly  declared  that  his  observations  had  taught 
him  the  real  way  the  Holy  Personages  were  ranked 
in  Rome.  "  The  Mother  of  God,"  otherwise  the 
Virgin  Mary,  comes  first,  followed  in  order  by  the 
Deity,  Peter,  and  some  twelve  or  fifteen  canonized 
Popes  and  Martyrs.  Last  of  all  came  Jesus  Christ 
the  Saviour — but  even  then,  always  as  an  infant 
in  arms  ! 

Who  can  ever  forget  the  Mark  Twain  who  kissed 
the  Hawaiian  stranger  for  his  mother's  sake,  the 


THE  HUMORIST  93 

while  robbing  him  of  his  small  change ;  who  was  so 
struck  by  the  fine  points  of  his  Honolulan  horse 
that  he  hung  his  hat  on  one  of  them ;  who 
rode  glaciers  as  gaily  as  he  rode  Mexican  plugs, 
and  found  diverting  programmes  of  the  Roman 
Coliseum,  in  the  dust  and  rubbish  of  two  thousand 
years  ago  ! 

Samuel  L.  Clemens  achieved  instantaneous  and 
world- wide  popularity  at  a  single  bound  by  the 
creation  of  a  fantastic  and  delightfully  naive  char 
acter  known  as  "  Mark  Twain."  At  a  somewhat 
later  day,  Bernard  Shaw  achieved  world-wide  fame 
by  the  creation  of  a  legendary  and  fantastic  wit 
known  as  "  G.  B.  S."  To  the  composition  of  "  Mark 
Twain  "  went  all  the  wild  humour  of  ignorance — the  ^ 
boisterously  comic  admixture  of  the  sanguinary 
and  the  stoical.  The  humour  of  The  Jumping  Frog 
and  The  Innocents  Abroad  is  the  savage  and  naive 
humour  of  the  mining  camp,  not  the  sophisticated 
humour  of  civilization.  It  is  significant  that  Mme. 
Blanc,  a  polished  and  refined  intelligence,  found 
the  nil  admirari  attitude  of  "  Mark  Twain "  no 
more  enlightening  nor  suggestive  than  the  stoicism 
of  the  North  American  Indian.  This  mirthful  and 
mock-innocent  naivete,  so  alien  to  the  delicate  and  A 
subtle  spirit  of  the  French,  found  instant  response 


94  MARK  TWAIN 

in  the  heart  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  Germanic 
peoples.  The  English  and  the  Germans,  no  less 
than  the  Americans,  rejoiced  in  this  gay  fellow 
with  his  combination  of  appealing  ignorance  and 
but  half -concealed  shrewdness.  They  laughed  at 
this  unsophisticated  na'if,  gazing  in  wide-eyed  wonder 
ment  at  all  he  saw ;  and  they  delighted  in  the 
*  consciousness  that,  behind  this  thin  mask,  lay  an 
acute  and  searching  intelligence  revelling  in  the 
humorous  havoc  wrought  by  his  keen  perception 
of  the  contrasts  and  incongruities  of  life.  The 
note  of  this  early  humour  is  perfectly  caught  in  the 
incident  of  the  Eygptian  mummy.  Deliberately 
assumed  ignorance  of  the  grossest  sort,  by  Mark 
Twain  and  his  companions,  had  the  most  devastating 
effect  upon  the  foreign  guide — one  of  that  countless 
tribe  to  all  of  whom  Mark  applied  the  generic  name 
of  Ferguson.  After  driving  Ferguson  nearly  mad  with 
pretended  ignorance,  they  finally  asked  him  if  the 
mummy  was  dead.  When  Ferguson  glibly  replied 
that  he  had  been  dead  three  thousand  years,  he  was 
dumbfounded  at  the  fury  of  the  "  doctor  "  for  being 
imposed  upon  with  vile  second-hand  carcases.  The 
poor  Frenchman  was  warned  that  if  he  didn't  bring 
out  a  nice,  fresh  corpse  at  once,  they  would  brain  him  ! 
No  wonder  that,  later,  when  he  was  asked  for  a 


THE  HUMORIST  95 

description  of   the  party,   Ferguson  laconically  re 
marked  that  they  were  lunatics  ! 

In  speaking  of  contemporary  society,  Ibsen  once 
remarked  :  "  We  have  made  a  fiasco  both  in  the 
heroic  and  the  lover  roles.  The  only  parts  in  which 
we  have  shown  a  little  talent,  are  the  naively 
comic ;  but  with  our  more  highly  developed  self- 
consciousness  we  shall  no  longer  be  fitted  even  for 
that."  With  time  and  "  our  more  highly  developed 
self -consciousness  "  have  largely  passed  the  novelty 
and  the  charm  of  this  early  naively  comic  humour  of 
Mark  Twain.  But  it  is  as  valid  still,  as  it  was  in 
1867,  to  record  honestly  the  impressions  directly 
communicated  to  one  by  the  novelties,  peculiarities, 
individual  standards  and  ideals  of  other  peoples  and 
races.  Mark  Twain  spoke  his  mind  with  utter  dis 
regard  for  other  people's  opinions,  the  dicta  of 
criticism  or  the  authoritative  judgment  of  the 
schools.  The  Innocents  Abroad  is  eminently  read 
able,  not  alone  for  its  humour,  its  clever  journalism, 
its  remarkably  accurate  and  detailed  information, 
and  its  fine  descriptions.  The  rare  quality,  which 
made  it  "  sell  right  along — like  the  Bible,"  is  that 
it  is  the  vital  record  of  a  keen  and  searching 
intelligence.  Mark  Twain  found  so  many  of  the 
"^masterpieces  of  the  world  "  utterly  unimpressive 


96  MARK  TWAIN 

and  meaningless  to  him,  that  he  actually  began  to 
distrust  the  validity  of  his  own  impressions.     Every 
time  he  gloried  to  think  that  for  once  he  had  dis 
covered  an  ancient  painting  that  was  beautiful  and 
worthy  of  all  praise,  the  pleasure  it  gave  him  was 
an  infallible  proof  that  it  was  not  a  beautiful  picture, 
nor  in  any  sense  worthy   of   commendation !      He 
pours   out  the  torrents   of   his  ridicule,   not  indis 
criminately   upon   the   works    of    the    old   masters 
themselves — though    he    regarded    Nature    as    the 
grandest   of   all   the   old  masters — but  upon  those 
half-baked  sycophants  who  bend  the  knee  to  an  art 
they  do  not  understand,  an  art  of  which  they  feign 
comprehension    by    mouthings    full    of    cheap    and 
meaningless  tags.     As  potent  and  effective  as  ever, 
in  its  fine  comic  irony,  is  that  passage  in  which  he 
expresses   his   "  envy "   of    those    people  who  pay 
lavish  lip-service  to  scenes  and  works  of  art  which 
their    expressionless    language    shows    they    neither 
realize  nor  understand.     He  reserves  his  most  biting 
condemnation    for    those    second-hand    critics    who 
accept    other   people's    opinions    for   their    criteria, 
and    rave    over    "  beauty,"    "  soul,"    "  character," 
"  expression "    and    "  tone  "    in    wretched,    dingy, 
moth-eaten  pictures.     He  hated  with  the  heartiest 
detestation  such  people — whose  sole  ambition  seemed 


THE  HUMORIST  97 

to  be  to  make  a  fine  show  of  knowledge  of  art  by 
means  of  an  easily  acquired  vocabulary  of  inexpres 
sive  technical  terms  of  art  criticism. 

There  is  much,  I  fear,  of  misguided  honesty  in 
Mark  Twain's  records  of  foreign  travel.  To  the 
things  which  he  personally  reverenced,  he  was  always 
reverential ;  and  his  expression  of  likes  and  dislikes, 
of  prejudices  and  predilections,  was  honest  and 
fearless.  Grant  as  we  may  the  humorist's  right  to 
exaggerate  and  even  to  distort,  for  the  purposes  of 
his  fun-making,  it  does  not  therefore  follow  that 
his  judgments,  however  forthright  or  sincere,  are 
valid,  reputable  criticisms.  One's  enjoyment  of  his 
fresh  and  hilarious  humour,  his  persistent  fun-making 
is  no  whit  impaired  by  the  recognition  that  he  was 
lacking  in  the  faculty  of  historic  imagination  and  in 
the  finer  artistic  sense.  It  is,  in  a  measure,  because 
of  his  lack  of  culture  and,  more  broadly,  lack  of  real 
knowledge,  that  he  was  enabled  to  evoke  the  laughter 
of  the  multitude.  "  The  Mississippi  pilot,  homely, 
naive,  arrogantly  candid,"  says  Mr.  S.  P.  Sherman, 
"  refuses  to  sink  his  identity  in  the  object  con 
templated — that,  as  Corporal  Nym  would  have  said, 
is  the  humour  of  it.  He  is  the  kind  of  travelling 
companion  that  makes  you  wonder  why  you  went 
abroad.  He  turns  the  Old  World  into  a  laughing- 


98  MARK  TWAIN 

stock  by  shearing  it  of  its  storied  humanity — simply 
because  there  is  nothing  in  him  to  respond  to  the 
glory  that  was  Greece,  to  the  grandeur  that  was 
Rome — simpler  because  nothing  is  holier  to  him  than 
a  joke.     He  does  not  throw  the  comic  light  upon 
counterfeit  enthusiasm  ;  he  laughs  at  art,  history,  and 
antiquity  from  the  point   of  view  of  one  who  is 
ignorant  of  them  and  mightily  well  satisfied  with  his 
ignorance."     This  picture  reminds  us  of  the  foreign 
critics  of  The  Innocents  Abroad  and  A  Connecticut 
Yankee  in  King  Arthurs  Court :    it  is  too  partial 
and  restricted.     The  whole  point  of  Mark  Twain's 
humour,  as  exhibited  in  these  travel  notes,  is  missed 
in   the   statement    that   "  he   does   not   throw   the 
comic  light  upon  counterfeit  enthusiasm  "  —for  this 
might  almost    be   taken  as   the   "  philosophy  "   of 
his  books  of  foreign  travel.     And  yet  Mr.  Sherman's 
dictum,  in  its  entirety,  quite  clearly  provokes  the 
question   whether,    as    he    intimates,    the    "  over 
whelming    majority "    of    his    fellow-citizens    also 
were  not  mightily  pleased  with  Mark  Twain's  point 
of  view,   and  whether   they   did  not  enjoy  them 
selves  hugely  in  laughing,   not  at   him,   but  with 
him. 

In  commenting  on  the  reasons  for  the  broadening 
and  deepening  of  his  humour  with  the  passage  of 


THE  HUMORIST  99 

time,  Mr.  Clemens  once  remarked  to  me  :  "I  suc 
ceeded  in  the  long  run,  where  Shillaber,  Doesticks, 
and  Billings  failed,  because  they  never  had  an  ideal 
higher  than  that  of  merely  being  funny.  The  first 
great  lesson  of  my  life  was  the  discovery  that  I  had 
to  live  down  my  past.  When  I  first  began  to  lecture, 
and  in  my  earlier  writings,  my  sole  idea  was  to  make 
comic  capital  out  of  everything  I  saw  and  heard. 
My  object  was  not  to  tell  the  truth,  but  to  make 
people  laugh.  I  treated  my  readers  as  unfairly 
as n  treated  everybody  else — eager  to  betray  them 
at  the  end  with  some  monstrous  absurdity  or 
some  extravagant  anti- climax.  One  night,  after 
a  lecture  in  the  early  days,  Tom  Fitch,  the  '  silver- 
tongued  orator  of  Nevada,'  said  to  me  :  '  Clemens, 
your  lecture  was  magnificent.  It  was  eloquent, 
moving,  sincere.  Never  in  my  entire  life  have  I 
listened  to  such  a  magnificent  piece  of  descriptive 
narration.  But  you  committed  one  unpardonable 
sin — the  unpardonable  sin.  It  is  a  sin  you  must 
never  commit  again.  You  closed  a  most  eloquent 
description,  by  which  you  had  keyed  your  audience 
up  to  a  pitch  of  the  intensest  interest,  with  a  piece 
of  atrocious  anti- climax  which  nullified  all  the  really 
fine  effect  you  had  produced.  My  dear  Clemens, 
whatever  you  do,  never  sell  your  audience.'  And 


100  MARK  TWAIN 

that,"  continued  Mr.  Clemens,  "  was  my  first  really 
profitable  lesson." 

It  was  the  toning  down  of  his  youthful  extrava 
gance — Fitch's  precept  not  to  "  sell  "  his  audience, 
Mrs.  Fairbanks'  warning  not  to  try  their  endurance 
of  the  irreverent  too  far — that  had  a  markedly 
salutary  effect  upon  Mark  Twain's  humorous  writings. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  deep  and  lifelong 
friendship  of  Mr.  Howells,  expressing  itself  as  occasion 
demanded  in  the  friendliest  criticism,  had  a  subduing 
influence  upon  Mark  Twain's  tendency,  as  a  humorist, 
to  extravagance  and  headlong  exaggeration.  In 
time  he  left  the  field  of  carpet-bag  observation — 
the  humorous  depicting  of  things  seen  from  the 
rear  of  an  observation  car,  so  to  speak — and  turned 
to  fiction.  Now  at  last  the  long  pent-up  flood  of 
observation  upon  human  character  and  human 
characteristics  found  full  vent.  Tom  Sawyer  and 
Huckleberry  Finn  are  the  romances  of  eternal  youth, 
the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever.  They  are 
freighted,  however,  with  a  wealth  of  pungent  and 
humorous  characterization  that  have  made  of  them 
contemporary  classics.  From  ethical  sophistication 
and  moral  truantry  Mark  Twain  evolves  an  in 
exhaustible  supply  of  humour.  The  revolt  of  mis 
chievous  and  Bohemian  boyhood  against  the  stern 


THE  HUMORIST  101 

limitations  of  formal  Puritanism  is,  in  a  sense,  a 
principle  that  he  carried  with  him  to  the  grave. 
"  There  are  no  more  vital  passages  in  his  fiction," 
says  Mr.  Howells,  "  than  those  which  embody  char 
acter  as  it  is  affected  for  good  as  well  as  for  evil  by 
the  severity  of  the  local  Sunday-schooling  and 
church-going."  Out  of  the  pangs  of  conscience, 
the  ingenious  sedatives  of  sophistry,  the  numerous 
variations  of  the  lie,  he  won  a  wholesome  humour 
that  left  you  thinking,  by  inversion,  upon  the 
moral  involved.  Knowledge  of  human  nature  finds 
expression  in  forms  made  permanently  effective 
through  the  arresting  permeation  of  humour.  The 
incident  of  Tom  Sawyer  and  the  whitewashing  of 
the  fence  is  the  sort  of  thing  over  which  boy 
and  man  alike  can  chuckle  with  satisfaction — for 
Tom  Sawyer  had  discovered  a  great  law  of  human 
action  without  knowing  it,  namely,  that  in  order  to 
make  a  man  or  boy  covet  a  thing,  it  is  only  neces 
sary  to  make  the  thing  difficult  to  attain.  Huck's 
reasoning  about  chicken  stealing — the  exquisitely 
comic  shifting  of  ground  from  morality  to  expediency 
— is  a  striking  example  of  the  best  type  of  Mark 
Twain's  humour.  Following  his  father's  example, 
Huck  would  occasionally  "  lift "  a  chicken  that 
wasn't  roosting  comfortable ;  for  had  his  father  not 


102  MARK  TWAIN 

told  him  that  even  if  he  didn't  want  the  chicken 
himself,  he  could  always  find  somebody  that  did 
want  it,  and  a  good  deed  ain't  never  forgot  ?  Huck 
confesses  that  he  had  never  seen  his  Pap  when  he 
didn't  want  the  chicken  himself  ! 

The  germ  of  Mark  Twain's  humour,  wherever  it  is 
found,  from  The  Innocents  Abroad  to  The  Connecticut 
Yankee  and  Captain  Stormfield's  Visit  to  Heaven,  is 
found  in  the  mental  reactions  resulting  from  stu 
pendous  and  glaring  contrasts.  First  it  is  the 
Wild  Western  humorist,  primitive  and  untamed, 
running  amuck  through  the  petrified  formulas  and 
encrusted  traditions  of  Europe.  Then  comes  the 
fantastic  juxtaposition  of  the  shrewd  Connecticut 
Yankee,  with  his  comic  irreverence  and  raucous 
sense  of  humour,  his  bourgeois  limitations  and 
provincial  prejudices,  to  the  Court  of  King  Arthur, 
with  its  medievalism,  its  primitive  rudeness  and 
social  narrowness.  How  many  have  delighted  in 
the  Yankee's  inimitable  description  of  his  feelings 
toward  that  classic  damsel  of  the  sixth  century  ? 
At  first  he  got  along  easily  with  the  girl ;  but  after 
a  while  he  began  to  feel  for  her  a  sort  of  mysterious 
and  shuddery  reverence.  Whenever  she  began  to 
unwind  one  of  those  long  sentences  of  hers,  and  got 
it  well  under  way,  he  could  never  suppress  the  feeling 


THE  HUMORIST  103 

that  he  was  standing  in  the  awful  presence  of  the 
Mother  of  the  German  Language  ! 

Mark  Twain  ransacked  the  whole  world  of  his 
own  day,  all  countries,  savage  and  civilized,  for 
the  display  of  effective  and  ludicrous  contrast ;  and 
he  opened  up  an  illimitable  field  for  humanizing 
satire,  as  Mr.  Howells  has  said,  in  his  juxtaposition 
of  sociologic  types  thirteen  centuries  apart.  Not 
even  heaven  was  safe  from  the  comprehensive 
survey  of  his  satire;  and  Captain  Storm  field9  8  Visit 
tcTTTedven  is  a  remarkable  document, — a  forthright 
lay  sermon, — the  conventional  idea  of  heaven,  the 
theologic  conception  of  eternity,  as  heedlessly  taught 
from  the  pulpit,  thrown  into  comic,  yet  profoundly 
significant,  relief  against  the  background  of  the 
common-sense  of  a  deeply  human,  thoroughly 
modern  intelligence. 

Humour,  as  Thackeray  has  defined  it,  is  a  com 
bination  of  wit  and  love.  Certain  it  is  that,  in 
the  case  of  Mark  Twain,  wit  was  a  later  develop 
ment  of  his  humour ;  the  love  was  there  all 
the  time.  Mark  Twain  has  not  been  recognized  as 
a  wit ;  for  he  was  primarily  a  humorist,  and  only 
secondarily  a  wit.  But  the  passion  for  brief 
and  pungent  formulation  of  an  idea  grew  upon 
him ;  and  Pudfnhead  Wilson's  Calendar  is  a 


104  MARK  TWAIN 

mine  of  homely  and  memorable  aphorism,  epigram, 
injunction. 

According  to  Mark  Twain's  classification,  the  comic 
story  is  English,  the  witty  story  French,  the  humorous 
story  American.  While  the  other  two  depend  upon 
matter,  the  humorous  story  depends  for  its  effect 
upon  the  manner  of  telling.  The  witty  story  and 
the  comic  story  must  be  concise  and  end  with  a 
"  point "  ;  but  the  humorous  story  may  be  as  leisurely 
as  you  please  and  have  no  particular  destination. 
Mark  Twain  always  maintained  that,  while  anyone 
could  tell  effectively  a  comic  or  a  witty  story,  it 
required  a  person  skilled  in  an  art  of  a  rare  and  dis 
tinctive  character  to  tell  a  humorous  story  success 
fully.  Mark  Twain  was  himself  the  supreme  exemplar 
of  the  art  of  telling  a  humorous  story.  Take  this 
little  passage,  for  example,  which  convulsed  one  of  his 
London  audiences.  He  was  speaking  of  a  high 
mountain  that  he  had  come  across  in  his  travels. 
"  It  is  so  cold  that  people  who  have  been  there  find 
it  impossible  to  speak  the  truth ;  I  know  that's 
a  fact  (here  a  pause,  a  blank  stare,  a  shake  of  the 
head,  a  little  stroll  across  the  platform,  a  sigh,  a 
puff,  a  smothered  groan),  because — I've — (another 
pause)  —  been  —  (a  longer  pause)  —  there  myself." 
Who  could  equal  Mark  Twain  as  a  humorous  narrator, 


THE  HUMORIST  105 

in  his  recital  of  the  alarums  and  excursions,  crimina 
tions  and  recriminations,  over  the  story  of  somebody 
else's  dog  he  sold  to  General  Miles  for  three  dollars  ? 
He  delighted  numerous  audiences  with  his  story  of 
inveighing  Mrs.  Grover  Cleveland  at  a  White  House 
reception  into  writing  blindly  on  the  back  of  a  card  : 
"  He  didn't."  When  she  turned  it  over  she  dis 
covered  that  it  bore  on  the  other  side,  in  Mrs.  Clemens' 
handwriting,  the  startling  words :  "  Don't  wear 
your  arctics  in  the  White  House."  I  shall  never 
forget  his  recital  of  the  story  of  how  his  enthusiasm 
oozed  away  at  a  meeting  in  behalf  of  foreign  missions. 
So  moving  was  the  fervid  eloquence  of  the  exhorter 
that,  after  fifteen  minutes,  if  Mark  Twain  had  had  a 
blank  cheque  with  him,  he  would  gladly  have  turned 
it  over,  signed,  to  the  minister,  to  fill  out  for  any 
amount.  But  it  was  a  very  warm  evening,  the 
eloquence  of  the  minister  was  inexhaustible — and 
Mark  Twain's  enthusiasm  for  foreign  missions  slowly 
oozed  away — one  hundred  dollars,  fifty  dollars,  and 
even  lower  still — so  that  when  the  plate  was  actually 
passed  around,  Mark  put  in  ten  cents  and  took  out 
a  quarter  ! 

I  was  a  witness  in  London,  and  at  Oxford,  in  1907, 
of  the  vast,  spontaneous,  national  reception  which 
Mark  Twain  received  from  the  English  people.  One 


106  MARK  TWAIN 

incident  of  that  memorable  visit  is  a  perfect  example 
of  that  masterly  power  over  an  audience,  that  deep 
humanity,  with  which  Mark  Twain  was  endowed. 
At  the  banquet  presided  over  by  the  Lord  Mayor 
of  Liverpool,  which  was  the  signal  of  Mark  Twain's 
farewell  to  the  English  people,  his  peroration  was 
as  follows  : 

"  Many  and  many  a  year  ago  I  read  an  anecdote 
in  Dana's  Two  Years  Before  the  Mast.  A  frivolous 
little  self-important  captain  of  a  coasting-sloop  in 
the  dried-apple  and  kitchen-furniture  trade  was 
always  hailing  every  vessel  that  came  in  sight, 
just  to  hear  himself  talk  and  air  his  small  grandeurs. 
One  day  a  majestic  Indiaman  came  ploughing  by, 
with  course  on  course  of  canvas  towering  into  the 
sky,  her  decks  and  yards  swarming  with  sailors,  with 
macaws  and  monkeys  and  all  manner  of  strange 
and  romantic  creatures  populating  her  rigging,  and 
thereto  her  freightage  of  precious  spices  lading  the 
breeze  with  gracious  and  mysterious  odours  of  the 
Orient.  Of  course,  the  little  coaster- cap  tain  hopped 
into  the  shrouds  and  squeaked  a  hail :  '  Ship  ahoy  ! 
What  ship  is  that,  and  whence  and  whither  ?  '  In  a 
deep  and  thunderous  bass  came  the  answer  back, 
through  a  speaking  trumpet :  '  The  Begum  of  Bengal, 
a  hundred  and  twenty-three  days  out  from  Canton — 


THE  HUMORIST  107 

homeward  bound  !  What  ship  is  that  ?  '  The  little 
captain's  vanity  was  all  crushed  out  of  him,  and  most 
humbly  he  squeaked  back  :  '  Only  the  Mary  Ann — 
fourteen  hours  from  Boston,  bound  for  Kittery  Point 
with — with  nothing  to  speak  of  !  '  That  eloquent 
word  '  only '  expressed  the  deeps  of  his  stricken 
humbleness. 

"  And  what  is  my  case  ?  During  perhaps  one 
hour  in  the  twenty-four — not  more  than  that — I 
stop  and  reflect.  Then  I  am  humble,  then  I  am 
properly  meek,  and  for  that  little  time  I  am  '  only 
the  Mary  Ann  ' — fourteen  hours  out,  and  cargoed 
with  vegetables  and  tin- wear  ;  but  all  the  other 
twenty-three  my  self-satisfaction  rides  high,  and  I  am 
the  stately  Indiaman,  ploughing  the  great  seas  under 
a  cloud  of  sail,  and  laden  with  a  rich  freightage  of  the 
kindest  words  that  were  ever  spoken  to  a  wandering 
alien,  I  think  ;  my  twenty- six  crowded  and  fortunate 
days  multiplied  by  five ;  and  I  am  the  Begum  of 
Bengal,  a  hundred  and  twenty- three  days  out  from 
Canton — homeward  bound  !  " 

Says   "  Charles   Vale,"   in   describing  the   scene : 

4  The   audience    sat   spellbound  in  almost    painful 

silence,  till  it  could  restrain  itself  no  longer ;    and 

when  in  rich,  resonant,  uplifted  voice  Mark  Twain 

sang  out  the  words  :    '  I  am  the  Begum  of  Bengal, 


108  MARK  TWAIN 

a  hundred  and  twenty- three  days  out  from  Canton,' 
there  burst  forth  a  great  cheer  from  one  end  of  the 
room  to  the  other.  It  seemed  an  inopportune 
cheer,  and  for  a  moment  it  upset  the  orator  :  yet  it 
was  felicitous  in  opportuneness.  Slowly,  after  a 
long  pause,  came  the  last  two  words — like  that 
curious,  detached  and  high  note  in  which  a  great 
piece  of  music  suddenly  ends — '  Homeward  bound.' 
Again  there  was  a  cheer  :  but  this  time  it  was  lower  ; 
it  was  subdued  ;  it  was  the  fitting  echo  to  the  beauti 
ful  words — with  their  double  significance — the  parting 
from  a  hospitable  land,  the  return  to  the  native  land. 
.  .  .  Only  a  great  litterateur  could  have  conceived 
such  a  passage :  only  a  great  orator  could  have  so 
delivered  it." 

Mark  Twain  was  the  greatest  master  of  the  anecdote 
this  generation  has  known.  He  claimed  the  humorous 
story  as  an  American  invention,  and  one  that  has 
remained  at  home.  His  public  speeches  were  little 
mosaics  in  the  finesse  of  their  art ;  and  the  intri 
cacies  of  inflection,  insinuation,  jovial  innuendo  which 
Mark  Twain  threw  into  his  gestures,  his  implicative 
pauses,  his  suggestive  shrugs  and  deprecative  nods 
— all  these  are  hopelessly  volatilized  and  disappear 
entirely  from  the  printed  copy  of  his  speeches. 
He  gave  the  most  minute  and  elaborate  study  to 


THE  HUMORIST  109 

the  preparation  of  his  speeches  —  polishing  them 
dexterously  and  rehearsing  every  word,  every 
gesture,  with  infinite  care.  Yet  his  readiness  and 
fertility  of  resource  in  taking  advantage,  and  making 
telling  use,  of  things  in  the  speeches  of  those  immedi 
ately  preceding  him,  were  striking  evidences  of  the 
rapidity  of  his  thought-processes.  In  Boston,  when 
asked  what  he  thought  about  the  existence  of  a 
heaven  or  a  hell,  he  looked  grave  for  a  moment, 
and  then  replied :  "I  don't  want  to  express  an 
opinion.  It's  policy  for  me  to  keep  silent.  You 
see,  I  have  friends  in  both  places."  His  speech 
introducing  General  Hawley  of  Connecticut  to  a 
Republican  meeting  at  Elmira,  New  York,  is  an 
admirable  example  of  his  laconic  art :  "  General 
Hawley  is  a  member  of  my  church  at  Hartford, 
and  the  author  of  '  Beautiful  Snow.'  Maybe  he 
will  deny  that.  But  I  am  only  here  to  give  him  a 
character  from  his  last  place.  As  a  pure  citizen, 
I  respect  him ;  as  a  personal  friend  of  years,  I  have 
the  warmest  regard  for  him ;  as  a  neighbour,  whose 
vegetable  garden  adjoins  mine,  why — why,  I  watch 
him.  As  the  author  of  '  Beautiful  Snow,'  he  has 
added  a  new  pang  to  winter.  He  is  a  square,  true 
man  in  honest  politics,  and  I  must  say  he  occupies 
a  mighty  lonesome  position.  So  broad,  so  bountiful 


110  MARK  TWAIN 

is  his  character  that  he  never  turned  a  tramp  empty- 
handed  from  his  door,  but  always  gave  him  a  letter 
of  introduction  to  me.  Pure,  honest,  incorruptible, 
that  is  Joe  Hawley.  Such  a  man  in  politics  is  like 
a  bottle  of  perfumery  in  a  glue  factory — it  may 
modify  the  stench,  but  it  doesn't  destroy  it.  I 
haven't  said  any  more  of  him  than  I  would  say  of 
myself.  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  this  is  General 
Hawley." 

Mr.  Chesterton  maintains  that  Mark  Twain  was  a 
wit  rather  than  a  humorist — perhaps  something  more 
than  a  humorist.  "  Wit,"  he  explains,  "  requires 
an  intellectual  athleticism,  because  it  is  akin  to 
logic.  A  wit  must  have  something  of  the  same 
running,  working,  and  staying  power  as  a  mathe 
matician  or  a  metaphysician.  Moreover,  wit  is  a 
fighting  thing  and  a  working  thing.  A  man  may 
enjoy  humour  all  by  himself ;  he  may  see  a  joke 
when  no  one  else  sees  it ;  he  may  see  the  point  and 
avoid  it.  But  wit  is  a  sword  ;  it  is  meant  to  make 
people  feel  the  point  as  well  as  see  it.  All  honest 
people  saw  the  point  of  Mark  Twain's  wit.  Not  a 
few  dishonest  people  felt  it."  The  epigram,  "  Be 
virtuous,  and  you  will  be  eccentric,"  has  become 
a  catchword  ;  and  everyone  has  heard  Mark  Twain's 
reply  to  the  reporter  asking  for  advice  as  to  what 


THE  HUMORIST  111 

to  cable  his  paper,  which  had  printed  the  statement 
that  Mark  Twain  was  dead :    "  Say  that  the  state 
ment  is  greatly  exaggerated."     He  has   admirably 
taken  off  humanity's   enduring   self-conceit  in  the 
statement  that  there  isn't  a  Parallel  of  Latitude  but 
thinks  it  would  have  been  the  Equator  if  it  had  had 
its  rights.     There  is  something  peculiarly  American 
in  his  warning  to  young  girls  not  to  marry — that  is, 
not  to  excess  !     His  remarks  on  compliments  have  a 
delightful  and  naive  freshness.     He  points  out  how 
embarrassing    compliments    always    are.     It    is    so 
difficult  to  take  them  naturally.     You  never  know 
what  to  say.     He  had  received  many  compliments 
in  his  lifetime,  and  they  had  always  embarrassed 
him — he  always  felt  that  they  hadn't  said  enough ! 
The  incident  of  Mark  Twain's  first  meeting  with 
Whistler  is  quaintly  illustrative  of  one  phase  of  his 
broader   humour.     Mark   Twain   was    taken   by    a 
friend  to  Whistler's  studio,  just  as  he  was  putting 
the  finishing  touches  to  one  of  his  fantastic  studies. 
Confident  of  the  usual  commendation,  Whistler  in 
quired  his  guest's  opinion  of  the  picture.     Mark  Twain 
assumed  the  air  of  a  connoisseur,  and  approaching 
the  picture  remarked  that  it  did  very  well,  but — 
"  he  didn't  care  much  for  that  cloud — "  ;  and  suiting 
the  action  to  the  word,  appeared  to  be  on  the  point 


MARK  TWAIN 

of  rubbing  the  cloud  with  his  gloved  finger.  In 
genuine  horror,  Whistler  exclaimed  :  "  Don't  touch 
it,  the  paint's  wet !  "  "  Oh,  that's  all  right,"  replied 
Mark  with  his  characteristic  drawl :  "  these  aren't 
my  best  gloves,  anyhow  !  "  Whereat  Whistler  re 
cognized  a  congenial  spirit,  and  their  first  hearty 
laugh  together  was  the  beginning  of  a  friendly  and 
congenial  relationship. 

I  recall  an  incident  in  connection  with  the  writing 
of  his  Autobiography.  On  more  than  one  occasion, 
he  declared  that  the  Autobiography  was  going  to 
be  something  awful — as  caustic,  fiendish,  and  devilish 
as  he  could  make  it.  Actually,  he  was  in  the  habit 
of  jotting  on  the  margin  of  the  page,  opposite  to  some 
startling  characterization  or  diabolic  joke  :  "  Not 
to  be  published  until  ten  (or  twenty,  or  thirty)  years 
after  my  death."  One  day  I  heard  him  vent  his 
pent-up  rage,  in  bitter  and  caustic  words,  upon  a 
certain  strenuous,  limelight  American  politician.  I 
could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  ask  him  if  this,  too, 
were  going  into  the  Autobiography.  "  Oh  yes," 
he  replied,  decisively.  "  Everything  goes  in.  I 
make  no  exceptions.  But,"  he  added  reflectively, 
with  the  suspicion  of  a  twinkle  in  his  eye,  "  I  shall 
make  a  note  beside  this  passage :  6  Not  to  be  published 
until  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  my  death  ' !  " 


THE  HUMORIST 

Mark  Twain  had  numerous  "  doubles  "  scattered 
about  the  world.  The  number  continually  increased ; 
once  a  month  on  an  average,  he  would  receive  a 
letter  from  a  new  "  double,"  enclosing  a  photograph 
in  proof  of  the  resemblance.  Mark  once  wrote  to 
one  of  these  doubles  as  follows  : 

MY  DEAR  SIR — 

Many  thanks  for  your  letter,  with  enclosed 
photograph.  Your  resemblance  to  me  is  remarkable. 
In  fact,  to  be  perfectly  honest,  you  look  more  like 
me  than  I  look  like  myself.  I  was  so  much  impressed 
by  the  resemblance  that  I  have  had  your  picture 
framed,  and  am  now  using  it  regularly,  in  place  of  a 
mirror,  to  shave  by. 

Yours  gratefully, 

S.  L.  CLEMENS. 

Although  not  generally  recognized,  it  is  un 
doubtedly  true  that  Mark  Twain  was  a  wit  as  well 
as  a  humorist.  He  was  the  author  of  many  epigrams 
and  curt  aphorisms  which  have  become  stock  phrases 
in  conversation,  quoted  in  all  classes  of  society 
wherever  the  English  language  is  spoken.  His  phras 
ing  is  unpretentious,  even  homely,  wearing  none  of 
the  polished  brilliancy  of  La  Rochefoucauld  or  Bernard 
Shaw ;  but  Mark  Twain's  sayings  "  stick  "  because 
H 


114  MARK  TWAIN 

they  are  rooted  in  shrewdness  and  hard  common- 
sense. 

Mark  Twain's  warning  to  the  two  burglars  who 
stole  his  silverware  from  "  Stormfield "  and  were 
afterwards  caught  and  sent  to  the  penitentiary,  is 
very  amusing,  though  not  highly  complimentary  to 
American  political  life  : — 

"  Now  you  two  young  men  have  been  up  to  my 
house,  stealing  my  tinware,  and  got  pulled  in  by  these 
Yankees  up  here.  You  had  much  better  have  stayed 
in  New  York,  where  you  have  the  pull.  Don't  you 
see  where  you're  drifting.  They'll  send  you  from 
here  down  to  Bridgeport  jail,  and  the  next  thing  you 
know  you'll  be  in  the  United  States  Senate.  There's 
no  other  future  left  open  to  you." 

The  sign  he  posted  after  the  visitation  of  these 
same  burglars  was  a  prominent  ornament  of  the 
billiard  room  at  "  Stormfield  "  : — 

NOTICE 
To  the  next  Burglar 

There  is  nothing  but  plated-ware  in  this  house, 
now  and  henceforth.  You  will  find  it  in  that  brass 
thing  in  the  dining-room  over  in  the  corner  by  the 
basket  of  kittens.  If  you  want  the  basket,  put  the 
kittens  in  the  brass  thing. 


THE  HUMORIST  115 

Do  not  make  a  noise,  it  disturbs  the  family. 
You  will  find  rubbers  in  the  front  hall,  by  that 
thing  which  has  the  umbrellas  in  it,  chiffonnier,  I 
think   they  call  it,   or   pergola,  or   something   like 
that. 

Please  close  the  door  when  you  go  away ! 
Very  truly  yours, 

S.  L.  CLEMENS. 

Now  these  are  examples  of  Mark  Twain's  humour, 
American  humour,  such  as  we  are  accustomed  to 
expect  from  Mark  Twain — humour  not  unmixed  with 
a  strong  spice  of  wit.  But  Mark  Twain  was  capable 
of  wit,  pure  and  unadulterated,  curt  and  concise.  I 
once  saw  him  write  in  a  young  girl's  birthday  book 
an  aphorism  which  he  said  was  one  of  his  favourites  : 
"Truth  is  our  most  valuable  possession.  Let  us 
economize  it."  The  advice  he  once  gave  me  as  to  the 
proper  frame  of  mind  for  undergoing  a  surgical  opera 
tion  has  always  remained  in  my  memory  :  "  Console 
yourself  with  the  reflection  that  you  are  giving  the 
doctor  pleasure,  and  that  he  is  getting  paid  for  it." 
Peculiarly  memorable  is  his  forthright  dictum  that 
the  statue  which  advertises  its  modesty  with  a 
fig-leaf  brings  its  modesty  under  suspicion.  His 
business  motto — unfortunately,  a  motto  that  he 


116  MARK  TWAIN 

never  followed — has  often  been  attributed,  because 
of  its  canny  shrewdness,  to  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie. 
The  idea  was  to  put  all  your  eggs  in  one  basket — and 
then — watch  that  basket  I  His  anti-Puritanical  con 
victions  find  concrete  expression  in  his  assertion  that 
few  things  are  harder  to  put  up  with  than  the  annoy 
ance  of  a  good  example.  Truly  classic,  in  usage  if 
not  in  form,  is  his  happy  saying  that  faith  is  believing 
what  you  know  ain't  so.  His  definition  of  a  classic 
as  a  book  which  people  praise  but  don't  read,  is  as 
frequently  heard  as  are  Biblical  and  Shakespearian 
tags. 

Mr.  Clemens  once  told  me  that  he  had  composed 
between  two  and  three  hundred  maxims  during  his 
life.  Many  of  them,  especially  those  from  the  old 
and  new  calendars  of  Pudd'nhead  Wilson,  bear  the 
individual  and  peculiar  stamp  of  Mark  Twain's 
phraseology  and  outlook  upon  life — quaint,  genial, 
and  shrewd.  In  pursuance  of  his  deep-rooted  belief 
in  the  omnipotent  power  of  training,  he  remarked 
that  the  peach  was  once  a  bitter  almond,  the  cauli 
flower  nothing  but  cabbage  with  a  college  education. 
He  himself  was  not  guiltless  of  that  irreverence  which 
he  defined  as  disrespect  for  another  man's  god. 
Women  took  an  almost  unholy  delight  in  describing 
some  of  their  undesirable  acquaintances,  in  Mark 


THE  HUMORIST  117 

Twain's  phrase,  as  neither  quite  refined,  nor  quite 
unrefined,  but  just  the  kind  of  person  that  keeps 
a  parrot ! 

At  times,  Mark  Twain  realized  the  sanctifying 
power  of  illusions  in  a  world  of  harsh  realities  ;  for 
he  asserted  that  when  illusions  are  gone  you  may 
still  exist,  but  you  have  ceased  to  live.  A  depress 
ing  sense  of  world-weariness  sometimes  overbore  the 
native  joyousness  of  his  temperament ;  and  he 
expressed  his  sense  of  deep  gratitude  to  Adam, 
the  first  great  benefactor  of  the  race — because 
he  had  brought  death  into  the  world.  A  funeral 
always  gave  Mark  Twain  a  sense  of  spiritual  uplift, 
a  sense  of  thankfulness  because  the  dead  friend  had 
been  set  free.  He  thought  it  was  far  harder  to 
live  than  to  die. 

In  one  of  his  early  sketches,  there  was  admirable 
wit  in  the  suggestion  to  the  organist  for  a  hymn 
appropriate  to  a  sermon  on  the  Prodigal  Son  : — 

"  Oh  !  we'll  all  get  blind  drunk 
When  Johnny  comes  marching  home  !  " 

And  in  The  Innocents  Abroad  there  is  the  same  sort 
of  brilliant  wit  in  the  mad  logic  of  his  innocent 
query,  on  learning  that  St.  Philip  Neri's  heart  was 
so  inflamed  with  divine  love  that  it  burst  his  ribs  : 


118  MARK  TWAIN 

"  I  was  curious  to  know  what  Philip  had  for  dinner." 
Mark  Twain  was  capable  of  epigrams  worthy,  in 
their  dark  levity,  of  Swift  himself.  In  speaking  of 
Pudd'nhead  Wilson,  Anna  E.  Keeling  has  said : 
"  Humour  there  is  in  almost  every  scene  and  every 
page ;  but  it  is  such  humour  as  sheds  a  wild  gleam 
on  the  greatest  Shakespearian  tragedies — on  the 
deep  melancholy  of  Hamlet,  the  heartbreak  of  Lear." 
The  greatest  ironic  achievements  of  Mark  Twain, 
in  brief  compass,  are  the  two  stories  :  The  Man  that 
Corrupted  Hadleyburg  and  Was  it  Heaven  or  Hell? 
They  reveal  the  power  and  subtlety  of  his  art  as  an 
ironic  humorist — or  shall  we  rather  say,  ironic  wit  ? 
For  they  range  all  the  way  from  the  most  mordant 
to  the  most  pathetic  irony — from  Mephistophelean 
laughter  to  warm,  human  tears 

"  Sunt  lachrymce  rerum." 

"  Make  a  reputation  first  by  your  more  solid 
achievements,"  counselled  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 
"  You  can't  expect  to  do  anything  great  with 
Macbeth,  if  you  first  come  on  flourishing  Paul  Pry's 
umbrella."  Mark  Twain  has  had  to  pay  in  full  the 
penalty  of  comic  greatness.  The  world  is  loth  to 
accept  a  popular  character  at  any  rating  other  than 
its  own.  Whosoever  sets  himself  the  task  of  amusing 


THE  HUMORIST  119 

the  world  must  realize  the  almost  insuperable 
difficulty  of  inducing  the  world  to  regard  him  as  a 
serious  thinker.  Says  Moliere — 

"  Oest  une  etrange  entreprise  que  celle 
defaire  rire  les  honnetes  gens." 

The  strangeness  of  the  undertaking  is  no  less 
pronounced  than  the  rigour  of  its  obligations.  Mark 
Twain  began  his  career  as  a  professional  humorist 
and  fun-maker ;  he  frankly  donned  the  motley,  the 
cap  and  bells.  The  man-in- the- street  is  not  easily 
persuaded  that  the  basis  of  the  comic  is,  not  un 
common  nonsense,  but  glorified  common-sense. 
The  French  have  a  fine-flavoured  distinction  in 
ce  qui  remue  from  ce  qui  emeut ;  and  if  remuage  is 
the  defining  characteristic  of  A  Tramp  Abroad, 
Roughing  It,  and  The  Innocents  Abroad,  there  is 
much  of  deep  seriousness  and  genuine  emotion  in 
Life  on  the  Mississippi,  Tom  Sawyer,  Huckleberry 
Finn,  and  Pudd'nhead  Wilson.  In  the  course  of 
his  lifetime,  Mark  Twain  evolved  from  a  fun-maker 
into  a  masterly  humorist,  from  a  sensational  journalist 
into  a  literary  artist.  In  explanation  of  this,  let 
us  recall  the  steps  in  that  evolution.  In  his  youth, 
this  boy  had  no  schooling  worth  speaking  of ;  he 
lived  in  an  environment  that  promised  only  stagna 
tion  and  decay.  As  the  young  boy,  barefooted  and 


120  MARK  TWAIN 

dirty,  watched  the  steamboats  pass  and  repass 
upon  the  surface  of  that  great  inland  deep,  the 
Mississippi,  he  conceived  the  ambition  and  the 
ideal  of  learning  to  know  and  to  master  that  mysteri 
ous  water.  His  dream,  in  time,  was  realized  ;  he  not 
only  became  a  pilot,  but — which  is  infinitely  more 
significant — he  changed  from  a  callow,  indolent, 
unobservant  lad,  with  undeveloped  faculties,  to  a 
man,  a  master  of  the  river,  with  a  knowledge  which, 
in  its  accuracy  and  minuteness,  was,  for  its  purpose, 
all-sufficient  and  complete. 

I  have  always  felt  that,  had  it  not  been  for  this 
training  in  the  great  university  of  the  Mississippi, 
Mark  Twain  might  never  have  acquired  that  trained 
/  faculty  for  minute  detail  and  descriptive  elaboration 
without  which  his  works,  full  of  flaws  as  they  are, 
might  never  have  revealed  the  very  real  art  which 
they  betray.  For  the  art  of  Mark  Twain  is  the  art 
of  taking  infinite  pains — the  art  of  exactitude, 
precision  and  detail.  Humour  per  se  is  as  ephemeral 
as  the  laugh — dying  in  the  very  moment  of  its  birth. 
Art  alone  can  give  it  enduring  vitality.  Mark 
Twain's  native  temperament,  rich  with  humour 
and  racy  of  the  soil,  drank  in  the  wonder  of  the 
river  and  unfolded  through  communication  with 
all  its  rude  human  devotees  ;  the  quick  mind,  the 


THE  HUMORIST 

eager  susceptibility,  developed  and  matured  through 
rigorous  education  in  particularity  and  detail ; 
and  before  his  spirit  the  very  beauties  of  Nature 
herself  disappeared  in  face  of  a  consuming  sense  of 
the  work  of  the  world  that  must  be  done. 

Mark  Twain  never  wholly  escaped  the  penalty 
that  his  reputation  as  a  humorist  compelled  him  to 
pay.  He  became  more  than  popular  novelist,  more 
than  a  jovial  entertainer :  he  became  a  public 
institution,  j  as  unmistakable  and  as  national  as 
the  Library  of  Congress  or  the  Democratic  Party. 
/Even  in  the  latest  years  of  his  life,jthough  long  since 
dissociated  in  fact  from  the  category  of  Artemus 
Ward,  John  Phoenix,  Josh  Billings,  and  Petroleum 
V.  Nasby,|  Mark  Twain  could  never  be  sure  that  his 
most  solemn  utterance  might  not  be  drowned  in 
roars  of  thoughtless  laughter. 

"  It  has  been  a  very  serious  and  a  very  difficult 
matter,"  Mr.  Clemens  once  said  to  me,  "  to  doff  the 
mask  of  humour  with  which  the  public  is  accustomed, 
in  thought,  to  see  me  adorned.  It  is  the  incor 
rigible  practice  of  the  public,  in  this  or  in  any 
country,  to  see  only  humour  in  the  humorist,  how- 
ever  serious  his  vein.  I  Not  long  ago  I  wrote  a  poem, 
which  I  never  dreamed  of  giving  to  the  public,  on 
account  of  its  seriousness ;  but  on  being  invited 


122  MARK  TWAIN 

to  address  the  women  students  of  a  certain  great 
university,  I  was  persuaded  by  a  near  friend  to 
read  this  poem.  At  the  close  of  my  lecture  I  said : 
c  Now,  ladies,  I  am  going  to  read  you  a  poem  of 
mine  ' — which  was  greeted  with  bursts  of  uproarious 
laughter.  '  But  this  is  a  truly  serious  poem,'  I 
asseverated — only  to  be  greeted  with  renewed  and, 
this  time,  more  uproarious  laughter.  Nettled  by 
this  misunderstanding,  I  put  the  poem  in  my  pocket, 
saying,  '  Well,  young  ladies,  since  you  do  not  believe 
me  to  be  serious,  I  shall  not  read  the  poem ' — at  which 

*  the  audience  almost  went  into  convulsions  of  laughter. ' ' 
Humour  is  a  function  of  nationality.  The  same 
joke,  as  related  by  an  American,  a  Scotchman,  an 
Irishman,  a  Frenchman,  carries  with  it  a  distinctive 
racial  flavour  and  individuality  of  approach.  Indeed, 
it  is  open  to  question  whether  most  humour  is  not 
essentially  local  in  its  nature,  requiring  some 
specialized  knowledge  of  some  particular  locality. 
It  would  be  quite  impossible  for  an  Italian  on  his 
native  heath  to  understand  that  great  political 
satirist,  "Mr.  Dooley,"  on  the  Negro  Problem,  for 
example.  After  reading  George  Ade's  Fables  in 

,  Slang,  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  was  driven  to  the  desperate 
conclusion  that  humour  varies  with  the  parallels  of 
latitude,  a  joke  in  Chicago  being  a  riddle  in  London  ! 


THE  HUMORIST  123 

If  one  would  lay  his  finger  upon  the  secret  of  Mark 
Twain's  world-wide  popularity  as  a  humorist,  he 
would  find  that  secret,  primarily,  in  the  universality 
and  humanity  of  his  humour.  Mark  Twain  is  a 
master  in  the  art  of  broad  contrast ;  incongruity 
lurks  on  the  surface  of  his  humour ;  and  there  is 
about  it  a  staggering  and  cyclopean  surprise.  But 
these  are  mere  surface  qualities,  more  or  less  common, 
though  at  lower  power,  to  all  forms  of  humour. 
Nor  is  his  international  vogue  as  a  humorist  to  be 
attributed  to  any  tricks  of  style,  to  any  breadth  of 
knowledge,  or  even  to  any  depth  of  intellectuality. 
His  hold  upon  the  world  is  due  to  qualities,  not  of 
the  head,  but  of  the  heart.  I  once  heard  Mr.  Clemens 
say  that  humour  is  the  key  to  the  hearts  of  men, 
for  it  springs  from  the  heart ;  and  worthy  of  record 
is  his  dictum  that  there  is  far  more  of  feeling  than  of 
thought  in  genuine  humour. 

Mark  Twain  succeeded  in  "  tickling  the  midriff 
of  the  English-speaking  races  "  with  a  single  story ; 
and  in  time  he  showed  himself  to  be,  not  only 
a  man  of  letters,  but  also  a  man  of  action.  His 
humour  has  been  defined  as  the  sunny  break  of  his 
serious  purpose.  Horace  Walpole  has  said  that  the 
world  is  a  comedy  to  the  man  of  thought,  a  tragedy 
to  the  man  of  feeling.  To  the  great  humorist — to 


124  MARK  TWAIN 

Mark  Twain — the  world  was  a  tragi- comedy.  Like 
fimile  Faguet,  he  seemed  at  times  to  feel  that  grief 
is  the  most  real  and  important  thing  in  the  world 
— because  it  separates  us  from  happiness.  He  was 
an  exemplar  of  the  highest,  truest,  sincerest  humour, 
perfectly  fulfilling  George  Meredith's  definition : 
"  If  you  laugh  all  round  him,  tumble  him,  roll  him 
about,  deal  him  a  smack,  and  drop  a  tear  on  him, 
own  his  likeness  to  you  and  yours  to  your  neighbour, 
spare  him  as  little  as  you  shun,  pity  him  as  much 
as  you  expose,  it  is  the  spirit  of  Humour  that  is 
moving  you."  Mark  Twain's  fun  was  light-hearted 
and  insouciant,  his  pathos  genuine  and  profound. 
"  He  is,  above  all,"  said  that  oldest  of  English 
journals,  The  Spectator,  "  the  fearless  upholder  of  all 
that  is  clean,  noble,  straightforward,  innocent,  and 
manly.  .  .  .  If  he  is  a  jester,  he  jests  with  the  mirth 
of  the  happiest  of  the  Puritans  ;  he  has  read  much  of 
English  knighthood,  and  translated  the  best  of  it 
into  his  living  pages  ;  and  he  has  assuredly  already 
won  a  high  degree  in  letters  in  having  added  more 
than  any  writer  since  Dickens  to  the  gaiety  of  the 
Empire  of  the  English  language." 

Mark  Twain's  humour  flowed  warm  from  the 
heart.  He  enjoyed  to  the  utmost  those  two  in 
alienable  blessings :  "  laughter  and  the  love  of 


THE  HUMORIST  125 

friends."  He  woke  the  laughter  of  an  epoch  and 
numbered  a  world  for  his  friends.  "  He  is  the 
true  consolidator  of  nations,"  said  Mr.  Augustine 
Birrell.  "His  delightful  humour  is  of  the  kind 
which  dissipates  and  destroys  national  prejudices. 
His  truth  and  his  honour,  his  love  of  truth  and  his 
love  of  honour,  overflow  all  boundaries.  He  has 
made  the  world  better  by  his  presence." 


IV.  THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS 


"  Art  transmitting  the  simplest  feelings  of  common  life,  but 
such,  always,  as  are  accessible  to  all  men  in  the  whole  world — 
the  art  of  common  life — the  art  of  a  people — universal  art." 

TOLSTOY :   What  is  Art? 


.1* 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS 

SOME  years  ago  a  group  of  Mark  Twain's  friends,  in 
a  spirit  of  fun,  addressed  a  letter  to 

MARK  TWAIN 
GOD  KNOWS  WHERE. 

Though  taking  a  somewhat  circuitous  route,  the 
letter  went  unerringly  to  its  goal ;  and  it  was  not 
long  before  the  senders  of  that  letter  received  the 
laconic,  but  triumphant  reply  :  "  He  did."  They 
now  turned  the  tables  on  the  jubilant  author,  who 
equally  as  quickly  received  a  letter  addressed — 

MARK  TWAIN 
THE  DEVIL  KNOWS  WHERE. 

It  seemed  that  "  he  "  did,  too  ! 

In  his  lifetime  Mark  Twain  won  a  fame  that  was 
literally  world-wide — a  fame,  indeed,  which  seemed 
to  extend  to  realms  peopled  by  noted  theological 
characters.  From  very  humble  beginnings — he 
used  facetiously  to  speak  of  coming  up  from  the 
"  very  dregs  of  society "  ! — Mark  Twain  achieved 

I  129 


130  MARK  TWAIN 

international  eminence  and  repute.  This  accomplish 
ment  was  due  to  the  power  of  brain  and  personality 
alone.  In  this  sense,  his  career  is  unprecedented 
and  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  American  literature. 
._>  It  is  a  mark  of  the  democratic  independence  of 
America  that  she  has  betrayed  a  singular  indifference 
to  the  appraisal  of  her  literature  at  the  hands  of 
foreign  criticism.  Upon  her  writers  who  have  ex 
hibited  derivative  genius  —  Irving,  Hawthorne, 
Emerson,  Longfellow  —  American  criticism  has 
lavished  the  most  extravagant  eulogiums.  The 
three  geniuses  who  have  made  permanent  contribu 
tions  to  world-literature,  who  have  either  embodied 
in  the  completest  degree  the  spirit  of  American 
democracy,  or  who  have  had  the  widest  following 
of  imitators  and  admirers  in  foreign  countries,  still 
await  their  final  and  just  deserts  at  the  hands  of 
critical  opinion  in  their  own  land.  The  genius  of 
Edgar  Allan  Poe  gave  rise  to  schools  of  literature 
on  the  continent  of  Europe ;  yet  in  America  his 
name  must  remain  for  years  debarred  from  inclusion 
in  a  so-called  Hall  of  Fame  !  Walt  Whitman  and 
Mark  Twain,  the  two  great  interpreters  and  em 
bodiments  of  America,  represent  the  supreme  con 
tribution  of  democracy  to  universal  literature.  In 
so  far  as  it  is  legitimate  for  anyone  to  be  denominated 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          131 

a  "  self-made  man "  in  literature,  these  men  are 
justly  entitled  to  such  characterization.  They  owe 
nothing  to  European  literature — their  genius  is 
supremely  original,  native,  democratic.  The  case 
of  Mark  Twain,  which  is  our  present  concern,  is  a 
literary  phenomenon  which  imposes  upon  criticism, 
peculiarly  upon  American  criticism,  the  distinct 
obligation  of  tracing  the  steps  in  his  unhalting 
climb  to  an  eminence  that  was  international  in  its 
character,  and  of  defining  those  signal  qualities, 
traits,  characteristics — individual,  literary,  social, 
racial,  national  —  which  compassed  his  world  -  wide 
fame.  For  if  it  be  true  that  the  judgment  of  foreign 
nations  is  virtually  the  judgment  of  posterity, 
then  is  Mark  Twain  already  a  classic. 

Upon  the  continent  of  Europe,  Mark  Twain  first 
received  notable  recognition  in  France  at  the  hands 
of  that  brilliant  woman,  Mme.  Blanc  (Th.  Bentzon), 
who  devoted  so  much  of  her  energies  to  the  popular 
ization  of  American  literature  in  Europe.  That  one 
of  her  series  of  essays  upon  the  American  humorists 
which  dealt  with  Mark  Twain  appeared  in  the 
Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  in  1872 ;  in  it  appeared 
her  admirable  translation  of  The  Jumping  Frog. 
There  is  no  cause  for  surprise  that  a  scholarly  French 
woman,  reared  on  classic  models  and  confined  by 


132  MARK  TWAIN 

rigid  canons  of  art,  should  stand  aghast  at  this 
boisterous,  barbaric,  irreverent  jester  from  the  wilds 
of  America.  When  it  is  remembered  that  Mark 
Twain  began  his  career  as  one  of  the  sage-brush 
writers  and  gave  free  play  to  his  passion  for  horse 
play,  his  desire  to  "  lay  a  mine  "  for  the  other  fellow, 
and  his  defiance  of  the  traditional  and  the  classic, 
it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  Mme.  Blanc,  while 
honouring  him  with  recognition  in  the  most  authori 
tative  literary  journal  in  the  world,  could  not  conceal 
an  expression  of  amazement  over  his  enthusiastic 
acceptance  in  English-speaking  countries. 

"  Mark  Twain's  Jumping  Frog  should  be  mentioned  in  the 
first  place  as  one  of  his  most  popular  little  stories — almost  a 
type  of  the  rest.  It  is,  nevertheless,  rather  difficult  for  us  to 
understand,  while  reading  this  story,  the  '  roars  of  laughter ' 
that  it  excited  in  Australia  and  in  India,  in  New  York  and  in 
London  ;  the  numerous  editions  of  it  which  appeared  ;  the 
epithet  of  '  inimitable '  that  the  critics  of  the  English  press 
have  unanimously  awarded  to  it. 

"  We  may  remark  that  a  Persian  of  Montesquieu,  a  Huron 
of  Voltaire,  even  a  simple  Peruvian  woman  of  Madame  de 
Graffigny,  reasons  much  more  wisely  about  European  civiliza 
tion  than  an  American  of  San  Francisco.  The  fact  is,  that  it 
is  not  sufficient  to  have  wit,  or  even  natural  taste,  in  order  to 
appreciate  works  of  art. 

"It  is  the  right  of  humorists  to  be  extravagant;  but  still 
common  sense,  although  carefully  hidden,  ought  sometimes  to 
make  itself  apparent.  ...  In  Mark  Twain  the  Protestant  is 
enraged  against  the  pagan  worship  of  broken  marble  statues — 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          133 

the  democrat  denies  that  there  was  any  poetic  feeling  in  the 
middle  ages.  The  sublime  ruins  of  the  Coliseum  only  impressed 
him  with  the  superiority  of  America,  which  punishes  its  criminals 
by  forcing  them  to  work  for  the  benefit  of  the  State,  over  ancient 
Rome,  which  could  only  draw  from  the  punishments  which  it 
inflicted  the  passing  pleasure  of  a  spectacle. 

"  In  the  course  of  this  voyage  in  company  with  Mark  Twain, 
we  at  length  discover,  under  his  good-fellowship  and  apparent 
ingenuousness,  faults  which  we  should  never  have  expected. 
He  has  in  the  highest  degree  that  fault  of  appearing  astonished 
at  nothing — common,  we  may  say,  to  all  savages.  He  confesses 
himself  that  one  of  his  great  pleasures  is  to  horrify  the  guides 
by  his  indifference  and  stupidity.  He  is,  too,  decidedly  envious. 
.  .  .  We  could  willingly  pardon  him  his  patriotic  self-love,  often 
wounded  by  the  ignorance  of  Europeans,  above  all  in  what 
concerns  the  New  World,  if  only  that  national  pride  were 
without  mixture  of  personal  vanity ;  but  how  comes  it  that 
Mark  Twain,  so  severe  upon  those  poor  Turks,  finds  scarcely 
anything  to  criticize  in  Russia,  where  absolutism  has  neverthe 
less  not  ceased  to  flourish  ?  We  need  not  seek  far  for  the 
cause  of  this  indulgence :  the  Czar  received  our  ferocious 
republicans  ;  the  Empress,  and  the  Grand  Duchess  Mary,  spoke 
to  them  in  English. 

"  Taking  the  Pleasure  Trip  on  the  Continent  altogether,  does 
it  merit  the  success  it  enjoys  ?  In  spite  of  the  indulgence 
that  we  cannot  but  show  to  the  judgments  of  a  foreigner; 
while  recollecting  that  those  amongst  us  who  have  visited 
America  have  fallen,  doubtless,  under  the  influence  of  prejudices 
almost  as  dangerous  as  ignorance,  into  errors  quite  as  bad — in 
spite  of  the  wit  with  which  certain  pages  sparkle — we  must 
say  that  this  voyage  is  very  far  below  the  less  celebrated 
excursions  of  the  same  author  in  his  own  country." 

Three  years    later,   Mme.   Blanc    returns  to  the 


134  MARK  TWAIN 

discussion  of  Mark  Twain,  in  an  essay  in  the  Revue 
des  Deux  Mondes,  entitled  L'Age  Dore  en  Amerique 
—an  elaborate  review  and  analysis  of  The  Gilded 
Age.  The  savage  charm  and  real  simplicity  of 
Mark  Twain  are  not  lacking  in  appeal,  even  to  her 
sophisticated  intelligence ;  and  she  is  inclined  to 
infer  that  jovial  irony  and  animal  spirits  are  qualities 
sufficient  to  amuse  a  young  nation  of  people  like 
the  Americans  who  do  not,  like  the  French, 
pique  themselves  upon  being  blase.  According  to 
her  judgment,  Mark  Twain  and  Charles  Dudley 
Warner  are  lacking  in  the  requisite  mental  grasp 
for  the  "  stupendous  task  of  interpreting  the  great 
tableau  of  the  American  scene."  Nor  does  she 
regard  their  effort  at  collaboration  as  a  success  from 
the  standpoint  of  art.  The  charm  of  Colonel  Sellers 
wholly  escapes  her ;  she  cannot  understand  the 
almost  loving  appreciation  with  which  this  cheaply 
gross  forerunner  of  the  later  American  industrial 
brigand  was  greeted  by  the  American  public.  The 
book  repels  her  by  "  that  mixture  of  good  sense 
with  mad  folly — disorder  "  ;  but  she  praises  Mark 
Twain's  accuracy  as  a  reporter.  The  things  which 
offend  her  sensibilities  are  the  wilful  exaggeration  of 
the  characters,  and  the  jests  which  are  so  elaborately 
constructed  that  "  the  very  theme  itself  disappears 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          135 

under  the  mass  of  embroidery  which  overlays  it." 
"  The  audacities  of  a  Bret  Harte,  the  grosser  temeri 
ties  of  a  Mark  Twain,  still  astonish  us,"  she  concludes ; 
"  but  soon  we  shall  become  accustomed  to  an 
American  language  whose  savoury  freshness  is  not 
to  be  disdained,  awaiting  still  more  delicate  and 
refined  qualities  that  time  will  doubtless  bring." 

In  translating  The  Jumping  Frog  into  faultless 
French  (giving  Mark  Twain  the  opportunity  for 
that  delightful  retranslation  into  English  which 
furnished  delight  for  thousands),  in  reviewing  with 
elaboration  and  long  citations  The  Innocents  Abroad 
and  The  Gilded  Age,  Mme.  Blanc  introduced  Mark 
Twain  to  the  literary  public  of  France  ;  and  Emile 
Blemont,  in  his  Esquisses  Americaines  de  Mark 
Twain  (1881),  still  further  enhanced  the  fame  of 
Mark  Twain  in  France  by  translating  a  number  of 
his  slighter  sketches.  In  1886,  Eugene  Forgues 
published  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  an  ex 
haustive  review  (with  long  citations)  of  Life  on  the 
Mississippi,  under  the  title  Les  Caravanes  d'un 
humoriste ;  and  his  prefatory  remarks  in  regard  to 
Mark  Twain's  fame  in  France  at  that  time  may  be 
accepted  as  authoritative.  He  pointed  out  the 
praiseworthy  efforts  that  had  been  made  to  popu 
larize  these  "  transatlantic  gaieties,"  to  import 


136  MARK  TWAIN 

into  France  a  new  mode  of  comic  entertainment. 
Yet  he  felt  that  the  peculiar  twist  of  national  char 
acter,  the  type  of  wit  peculiar  to  a  people  and  a 
country,  the  specialized  conception  of  the  vis  comica 
revealed  in  Mark  Twain's  works,  confined  them 
to  a  restricted  milieu.  The  result  of  all  the  efforts 
to  popularize  Mark  Twain  in  France,  he  makes 
plain,  was  an  almost  complete  check ;  for  to  the 
French  taste  Mark  Twain's  pleasantry  appeared 
macabre,  his  wit  brutal,  his  temperament  dry  to 
excess.  By  some,  indeed,  his  exaggerations  were 
regarded  as  symptoms  of  mental  alienation ;  and 
the  originality  of  his  verve  did  not  succeed  in  giving 
a  passport  to  the  incoherence  of  his  conceptions. 
"  It  has  been  said,"  remarked  M.  Forgues,  with 
keen  perception,  "  that  an  academician  slumbers 
in  the  depths  of  every  Frenchman ;  and  it  was  this 
which  prevented  the  success  of  Mark  Twain  in  France. 
Humour,  in  France,  has  its  laws  and  its  restrictions. 
So  the  French  public  saw  in  Mark  Twain  a  gross 
jester,  incessantly  beating  upon  a  tom-tom  to 
attract  the  attention  of  the  crowd.  They  were 
tenacious  in  resisting  all  such  blandishments.  .  .  . 
As  a  humorist,  Mark  Twain  was  never  appreciated 
in  France.  The  appreciation  he  ultimately  secured 
— an  appreciation  by  no  means  inconsiderable, 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          137 

though  in  no  sense  comparable  to  that  won  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  and  Germanic  countries — was  due  to  his 
sagacity  and  penetration  as  an  observer,  and  to  his 
marvellous  faculty  for  calling  up  scenes  and  situations 
by  the  clever  use  of  the  novel  and  the  imprevu. 
There  was,  even  to  the  Frenchman,  a  certain  lively 
appeal  in  an  intelligence  absolutely  free  of  convention, 
sophistication,  or  reverence  for  traditionary  views 
qua  traditionary."  Though  at  first  the  salt  of  Mark 
Twain's  humour  seemed  to  the  French  to  be  lacking 
in  the  Attic  flavour,  this  new  mode  of  comic  enter 
tainment,  the  leisurely  exposition  of  the  genially 
naive  American,  in  time  won  its  way  with  the  blase 
Parisians.  Travellers  who  could  find  no  copy  of  the 
Bible  in  the  street  bookstalls  of  Paris,  were  con 
fronted  everywhere  with  copies  of  Roughing  It. 
When  the  authoritative  edition  of  Mark  Twain's 
works  appeared  in  English,  that  authoritative  French 
journal,  the  Mercure  de  France,  paid  him  this  dis 
tinguished  tribute :  "  His  public  is  as  varied  as 
possible,  because  of  the  versatility  and  suppleness 
of  his  talent  which  addresses  itself  successively  to 
all  classes  of  readers.  He  has  been  called  the  greatest 
humorist  in  the  world,  and  that  is  probably  the 
truth ;  but  he  is  also  a  charming  and  attractive 
story-teller,  an  alert  romancer,  a  clever  and  pene- 


138  MARK  TWAIN 

trating  observer,  a  philosopher  without  pretensions, 
and  therefore  all  the  more  profound,  and  finally,  a 
brilliant  essayist." 

Nevertheless,  the  observation  of  M.  Forgues  is 
just  and  authentic — the  Attic  flavour  of  Vesprit 
Gaulois  is  alien  to  the  loosely  articulated  structure 
of  American  humour.  The  noteworthy  criticism 
which  Mark  Twain  directed  at  Paul  Bourget's  Outre 
Mer,  and  the  subsequent  controversy  incident  thereto, 
forced  into  light  the  racial  and  temperamental 
dissimilarities  between  the  Gallic  and  the  American 
Ausschauung.  Mr.  Clemens  once  remarked  to  me 
that,  of  all  continental  peoples,  the  French  were 
most  alien  to  the  spirit  of  his  humour.  In  Le  Figaro, 
at  the  time  of  Mark  Twain's  death,  this  fundamental 
difference  in  taste  once  more  comes  to  light :  "It 
is  as  difficult  for  a  Frenchman  to  understand  Mark 
Twain  as  for  a  North  American  to  admire  La  Fontaine. 
At  first  sight,  there  is  nothing  in  common  between 
that  highly  specialized  faculty  which  the  Anglo- 
Saxons  of  the  old  and  the  new  world  designate  under 
the  name  of  humour,  and  that  quality  with  us  which 
we  call  wit  (esprit}.  And  yet,  at  bottom,  these  two 
manifestations  of  the  human  genius,  so  different 
in  appearance,  have  a  common  origin  and  reach  the 
same  result :  they  are,  both  of  them,  the  glorification 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          139 

of  good  sense  presented  in  pleasing  and  unexpected 
form.  Only,  this  form  must  necessarily  vary  with 
peoples  who  do  not  speak  the  same  language 
and  whose  skulls  are  not  fashioned  in  the  same 
way." 

In  Italy,  as  in  France,  the  peculiar  timbre  of 
Mark  Twain's  humour  found  an  audience  not  wholly 
sympathetic,  not  thoroughly  au  courant  with  his 
spirit.  "  Translation,  however  accurate  and  con 
scientious,"  as  the  Italian  critic,  Raffaele  Simboli, 
has  pointed  out,  "  fails  to  render  the  special  flavour 
of  his  work.  And  then  in  Italy,  where  humorous 
writing  generally  either  rests  on  a  political  basis 
or  depends  on  risky  phrases,  Mark  Twain's  sketches 
are  not  appreciated  because  the  spirit  which  breathes 
in  them  is  not  always  understood.  The  story  of 
The  Jumping  Frog,  for  instance,  famous  as  it  is  in 
America  and  England,  has  made  little  impression  in 
France  or  Italy." 

It  was  rather  among  the  Germanic  peoples  and 
those  most  closely  allied  to  them,  the  Scandinavians, 
that  Mark  Twain  found  most  complete  and  ready 
response.  At  first  blush,  it  seems  almost  incredible 
that  the  writings  of  Mark  Twain,  with  their  occasional 
slang,  their  colloquialisms  and  their  local  peculiarities 
of  dialect,  should  have  borne  translation  so  well  into 


140  MARK  TWAIN 

other  languages,  especially  into  German.  It  must, 
however,  be  borne  in  mind  that,  despite  these  peculiar 
features  of  his  writings,  they  are  couched  in  a 
style  of  most  marked  directness,  simplicity  and 
native  English  purity.  The  ease  with  which  his 
works  were  translated  into  foreign,  especially  the 
Germanic  and  allied  tongues,  and  the  eager  delight 
with  which  they  were  read  and  comprehended  by  all 
classes,  high  and  low,  constitute  perhaps  the  most 
signal  conceivable  tribute,  not  only  to  the  humanity 
of  his  spirit,  but  to  the  genuine  art  of  his  marvellously 
forthright  and  natural  style.  It  need  be  no  cause 
for  surprise  that  as  early  as  1872  he  had  secured 
Tauchnitz,  of  Leipzig,  for  his  Continental  agent. 
German  translations  soon  appeared  of  The  Jumping 
Frog  and  Other  Stories  (1874),  The  Gilded  Age  (1874), 
The  Innocents  Abroad  and  The  New  Pilgrim's  Pro 
gress  (1875),  The  Adventures  of  Tom  Sawyer  (1876). 
A  few  years  later  his  sketches,  many  of  them,  were 
translated  into  virtually  all  printed  languages, 
notably  into  Russian  and  modern  Greek  ;  and  his 
more  extended  works  gradually  came  to  be  translated 
into  German,  French.  Italian,  and  the  languages 
of  Denmark  and  the  Scandinavian  peninsula. 

The    elements    of    the    colossally    grotesque,    the 
wildly  primitive,  in  Mark  Twain's  works,  the  under- 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS         141 

lying  note  of  melancholy  not  less  than  the  law 
less  Bohemianism,  found  sympathetic  appreciation 
among  the  Germanic  races.  George  Meredith  has 
likened  the  functionings  of  Germanic  humour  to 
the  heavy-footed  antics  of  a  dancing  bear.  Mark 
Twain's  stories  of  the  Argonauts,  the  miners  and 
desperadoes,  with  their  primitive,  orgiastic  existence  ; 
his  narratives  of  the  wild  freedom  of  the  life  on  the 
Mississippi,  the  lawless  feuds  and  barbaric  encounters 
— all  appealed  to  the  passion  for  the  fantastic  and 
the  grotesque  innate  in  the  Germanic  consciousness. 
To  the  Europeans,  this  wild  genius  of  the  Pacific 
Slope  seemed  to  function  in  a  sort  of  unexplored 
fourth  dimension  of  humour — vast  and  novel — of 
which  they  had  never  dreamed.  It  is  noteworthy 
that  Schleich,  in  his  PsychopathiJc  des  Humors, 
reserved  for  American  humour,  with  Mark  Twain 
as  its  leading  exponent,  a  distinct  and  unique  cate 
gory  which  he  denominated  phantasiischen,  gross  - 
dimensionalen. 

To  the  biographer  belongs  the  task  of  describing, 
in  detail,  the  lavish  entertainment  and  open-hearted 
homage  which  were  bestowed  upon  Mark  Twain  in 
German  Europe.  In  writing  of  Mark  Twain  and  his 
popularity  in  Germanic  countries,  Carl  von  Thaler 
unhesitatingly  asserts  that  Mark  Twain  was  feted, 


MARK  TWAIN 

wined  and  dined  in  Vienna,  the  Austrian  metropolis, 
in  an  unprecedented  manner,  and  awarded  unique 
honours  hitherto  paid  to  no  German  writer.  In  Berlin, 
the  young  Kaiser  bestowed  upon  him  the  most 
distinguished  marks  of  his  esteem ;  and  praised  his 
works,  in  especial  Life  on  the  Mississippi,  with  the 
intensest  enthusiasm.  When  Mark  Twain  received 
a  command  from  the  Kaiser  to  dine  with  him,  his 
young  daughter  exclaimed  that  if  it  kept  on  like  this, 
there  soon  wouldn't  be  anybody  left  for  him  to 
become  acquainted  with  but  God !  Mark  said  that 
it  seemed  uncomplimentary  to  regard  him  as  un 
acquainted  in  that  quarter ;  but  of  course  his  daughter 
was  young,  and  the  young  always  jump  to  conclu 
sions  without  reflection.  After  hearing  the  Kaiser's 
eulogy  on  Life  on  the  Mississippi,  he  was  astounded 
and  touched  to  receive  a  similar  tribute,  the  same 
evening,  from  the  portier  of  his  lodging-house.  He 
loved  to  dwell  upon  this,  in  later  years — declaring 
it  the  most  extraordinary  coincidence  of  his  life  that 
a  crowned  head  and  a  portier,  the  very  top  of  an 
empire  and  the  very  bottom  of  it,  should  have 
expressed  the  very  same  criticism,  and  delivered  the 
very  same  verdict,  upon  one  of  his  books,  almost  in 
the  same  hour  and  the  same  breath. 

The  German  edition  of  his  works,  in  six  volumes, 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS         143 

published  by  Lutz  of  Stuttgart,  in  1898,  I  believe, 
contained  an  introduction  in  which  he  was  hailed 
as    the    greatest   humorist   in    the    world.     Among 
German  critics  he  was  regarded  as  second  only  to 
Dickens   in   drastic   comic   situation   and   depth   of 
feeling.     Robinson    Crusoe   was   held    to    exhibit    a 
limited  power  of  imagination  in   comparison  with 
the  ingenuity  and  inventiveness  of  Tom  Sawyer.     At 
times  the  German  critics   confessed  their  inability 
to   discover  the   dividing  line  between  astounding 
actuality  and  fantastic  exaggeration.     The  descrip 
tions   of   the   barbaric    state   of   Western   America 
possessed  an  indescribable  fascination  for  the  sedate 
Europeans.     At  times   Mark   Twain's   bloody   jests 
froze  the  laughter  on  their  lips  ;   and  his  "  revolver- 
humour  "  made  their  hair  stand  on  end.     Though 
realizing  that  the  scenes  and  events   described  in 
Tom  Sawyer,  Huckleberry  Finn,  Roughing  It,  and  Life 
on  the  Mississippi  could  not  have  been  duplicated 
in  Europe,  the  German  critics  revelled  in  them  none 
the  less  that  "  such  adventures  were  possible  only 
in    America — perhaps    only    in    the    fancy    of    an 
American  !  "     "  Mark    Twain's    greatest    strength," 
says  Von  Thaler,  "  lies  in  the  little  sketches,  the 
literary  snap-shots.     The  shorter  his  work,  the  more 
striking  it   is.     He   draws   directly   from   life.     No 


144  MARK  TWAIN 

other  writer  has  learned  to  know  so  many  different 
varieties  of  men  and  of  circumstances,  so  many 
strange  examples  of  the  Genus  Homo,  as  he ;  no 
other  has  taken  so  strange  a  course  of  development." 
The  deeper  elements  of  Mark  Twain's  humour  did 
not  escape  the  attention  of  the  Germans,  nor  fail 
of  appreciation  at  their  hands.  In  his  aphorisms, 
embodying  at  once  genuine  wit  and  experience  of 
life,  they  discovered  not  merely  the  American 
author,  but  the  universal  human  being;  these 
aphorisms  they  found  worthy  of  profound  and 
lasting  admiration.  Sintenis  found  in  Mark  Twain 
a  "  living  symptom  of  the  youthful  joy  in  existence  " 
— a  genius  capable  at  will,  despite  his  "  boyish 
extravagance,"  of  the  virile  formulation  of  fertile 
and  suggestive  ideas.  His  latest  critic  in  Germany 
wrote  at  the  time  of  his  death,  with  a  genuine  in 
sight  into  the  significance  of  his  work :  "  Although 
Mark  Twain's  humour  moves  us  to  irresistible 
laughter,  this  is  not  the  main  point  in  his  books  ; 
like  all  true  humorists,  ist  der  Witz  mit  dem  Welt- 
schmerz  verbunden,  he  is  a  witness  to  higher  thoughts 
and  higher  emotions,  and  his  purpose  is  to  expose 
bad  morals  and  evil  circumstances,  in  order  to  im 
prove  and  ennoble  mankind."  The  critic  of  the 
Berliner  Zeitung  asserted  that  Mark  Twain  is  loved 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          145 

in  Germany  more  than  all  other  humorists,  English 
or  French,  because  his  humour  "  turns  fundamentally 
upon  serious  and  earnest  conceptions  of  life."  It 
is  a  tremendously  significant  fact  that  the  works  of 
American  literature  most  widely  read  in  Germany 
are  the  works  of — striking  conjunction  ! — Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson  and  Mark  Twain. 

The  Jumping  Frog  of  Calaveras  County  fired  the 
laugh  heard  round  the  world.  Like  Byron,  Mark 
Twain  woke  one  morning  to  find  himself  famous. 
A  classic  fable,  which  had  once  evoked  inextinguish 
able  laughter  in  Athens,  was  unconsciously  re-told 
in  the  language  of  Angel's  Camp,  Calaveras  County, 
where  history  repeated  itself  with  a  precision  of 
detail  startling  in  its  miraculous  coincidence.  De 
spite  the  international  fame  thus  suddenly  won  by 
this  little  fable,  Mark  Twain  had  yet  to  overcome 
the  ingrained  opposition  of  insular  prejudice  before 
his  position  in  England  and  the  colonies  was 
established  upon  a  sure  and  enduring  footing.  In 
a  review  of  The  Innocents  Abroad  in  The  Saturday 
Review  (1870),  the  comparison  is  made  between  the 
Americans  who  "  do  Europe  in  six  weeks  "  and  the 
most  nearly  analogous  class  of  British  travellers, 
with  the  following  interesting  conclusions  :  "  The 
American  is  generally  the  noisier  and  more  actively 


146  MARK  TWAIN 

disagreeable,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  he  often  partially 
redeems  his  absurdity  by  a  certain  nawete  and  half- 
conscious  humour.  He  is  often  laughing  in  his 
sleeve  at  his  own  preposterous  brags,  and  does  not 
take  himself  quite  so  seriously  as  his  British  rival. 
He  is  vulgar,  and  even  ostentatiously  and  atrociously 
vulgar;  but  the  vulgarity  is  mixed  with  a  real 
shrewdness  which  rescues  it  from  simple  insipidity. 
We  laugh  at  him,  and  we  would  rather  not  have  too 
much  of  his  company  ;  but  we  do  not  feel  altogether 
safe  in  despising  him."  The  lordly  condescension 
and  gross  self-satisfaction  here  betrayed  are  but 
preliminaries  to  the  ludicrous  density  of  the  sub 
sequent  reflections  upon  Mark  Twain  himself  :  "  He 
parades  his  utter  ignorance  of  Continental  languages 
and  manners,  and  expresses  his  very  original  judg 
ments  on  various  wonders  of  art  and  nature  with  a 
praiseworthy  frankness.  We  are  sometimes  left 
in  doubt  whether  he  is  speaking  in  all  sincerity  or 
whether  he  is  having  a  sly  laugh  at  himself  and  his 
readers  "  !  It  is  quite  evident  that  the  large  mass 
of  English  readers,  represented  by  The  Saturday 
Review,  had  not  caught  Mark  Twain's  tone ;  but 
even  the  reviewer  is  more  than  half  won  over  by 
the  infectiousness  of  this  new  American  humour. 
"  Perhaps  we  have  persuaded  our  readers  by  this 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          147 

time  that  Mr.  Twain  (sic)  is  a  very  offensive  specimen 
of  the  vulgarest  kind  of  Yankee.  And  yet,  to  say 
the  truth,  we  have  a  kind  of  liking  for  him.  There 
is  a  frankness  and  originality  about  his  remarks 
which  is  (sic)  pleasanter  than  the  mere  repetition 
of  stale  raptures  ;  and  his  fun,  if  not  very  refined, 
is  often  tolerable  in  its  way.  In  short,  his  pages 
may  be  turned  over  with  amusement,  as  exhibiting 
more  or  less  consciously  a  very  lively  portrait  of  the 
uncultivated  American  tourist,  who  may  be  more 
obtrusive  and  misjudging,  but  is  not  quite  so  stupidly 
unobservant  as  our  native  product.  We  should 
not  choose  either  of  them  for  our  companions  on 
a  visit  to  a  church  or  a  picture-gallery,  but  we  should 
expect  most  amusement  from  the  Yankee  as  long 
as  we  could  stand  him."  It  was  this  review  which 
gave  Mark  Twain  the  opening  for  his  celebrated 
parody — a  parody  which,  I  have  always  thought, 
went  far  to  opening  the  eyes  of  the  British  public 
to  the  true  spirit  of  his  humour.  Such  irresistible 
fun  could  not  fail  of  appreciation  at  the  hands  of 
a  nation  which  regarded  Dickens  as  their  repre 
sentative  national  author. 

Two  years  later,  Mark  Twain  received  in  England 
an  appreciative  reception  of  wellnigh  national 
character.  Whilst  the  literary  and  academic  circles 


148  MARK  TWAIN 

of  America  withheld  their  unstinted  recognition  of 
an  author  so  primitive  and  unlettered,  Great  Britain 
received  him  with  open  arms.  He  was  a  welcome 
guest  at  the  houses  of  the  exclusive  ;  the  highest 
dignitaries  of  public  life,  the  authoritative  journals, 
the  leaders  of  fashion,  of  thought,  and  of  opinion 
openly  rejoiced  in  the  breezy  unconventionality, 
the  fascinating  daring,  and  the  genial  personality 
of  this  new  variety  of  American  genius.  His  English 
publisher,  John  Camden  Hotten,  wrote  in  1873 : 
"  How  he  dined  with  the  Sheriff  of  London  and 
Middlesex ;  how  he  spent  glorious  evenings  with 
the  wits  and  literati  who  gather  around  the  festive 
boards  of  the  Whitefriars  and  the  Savage  Clubs ; 
how  he  moved  in  the  gay  throng  at  the  Guildhall 
conversazione ;  how  he  feasted  with  the  Lord 
Mayor  of  London  ;  and  was  the  guest  of  that  ancient 
and  most  honourable  body — the  City  of  London 
Artillery — all  these  matters  we  should  like  to  dwell 
upon."  His  public  lectures,  though  not  so  popular 
as  those  of  Artemus  Ward,  won  him  recognition  as 
a  master  in  all  the  arts  of  the  platform.  Mr.  H.  R. 
Haweis,  who  heard  him  once  at  the  old  Hanover 
Square  Rooms,  thus  describes  the  occasion :  >c  The 
audience  was  not  large  nor  very  enthusiastic.  I 
believe  he  would  have  been  an  increasing  success 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          149 

had  he  stayed  longer.  We  had  not  time  to  get 
accustomed  to  his  peculiar  way,  and  there  was 
nothing  to  take  us  by  storm,  as  in  Artemus  Ward. 
....  He  came  on  and  stood  quite  alone.  A  little 
table,  with  the  traditional  water-bottle  and  tumbler, 
was  by  his  side.  His  appearance  was  not  impressive, 
not  very  unlike  the  representation  of  him  in  the 
various  pictures  in  his  Tramp  Abroad.  He  spoke 
more  slowly  than  any  other  man  I  ever  heard,  and 
did  not  look  at  his  audience  quite  enough.  I  do 
not  think  that  he  felt  altogether  at  home  with  us, 
nor  we  with  him.  We  never  laughed  loud  or  long ; 
no  one  went  into  those  irrepressible  convulsions 
which  used  to  make  Artemus  pause  and  look  so 
hurt  and  surprised.  We  sat  throughout  expectant 
and  on  the  qui  vive,  very  well  interested,  and  gently 
simmering  with  amusement.  With  the  exception 
of  one  exquisite  description  of  the  old  Magdalen 
ivy -covered  collegiate  buildings  at  Oxford  University, 
I  do  not  think  there  was  one  thing  worth  setting 
down  in  print.  I  got  no  information  out  of  the 
lecture,  and  hardly  a  joke  that  would  wear,  or  a 
story  that  would  bear  repeating.  There  was  a  deal 
about  the  dismal,  lone  silver-land,  the  story  of  the 
Mexican  plug  that  bucked,  and  a  duel  which  never 
came  off,  and  another  duel  in  which  no  one  was 


150  MARK  TWAIN 

injured ;  and  we  sat  patiently  enough  through  it, 
fancying  that  by  and  by  the  introduction  would  be 
over,  and  the  lecture  would  begin,  when  Twain  sud 
denly  made  his  bow  and  went  off !  It  was  over. 
I  looked  at  my  watch  ;  I  was  never  more  taken 
aback.  I  had  been  sitting  there  exactly  an  hour 
and  twenty  minutes.  It  seemed  ten  minutes  at  the 
outside.  If  you  have  ever  tried  to  address  a  public 
meeting,  you  will  know  what  this  means.  It  means 
that  Mark  Twain  is  a  consummate  public  speaker. 
If  ever  he  chose  to  say  anything,  he  would  say  it 
marvellously  well ;  but  in  the  art  of  saying  nothing 
in  an  hour,  he  surpasses  our  most  accomplished 
parliamentary  speakers." 

The  nation  which  had  been  reared  upon  the  wit 
of  Sidney  Smith,  the  irony  of  Swift,  the  gros  sel 
of  Fielding,  the  extravagance  of  Dickens,  was  ripe 
for  the  colossal  incongruities  and  daring  contrasts 
of  Mark  Twain.  They  recognized  in  him  not  only 
"  the  most  successful  and  original  wag  of  his  day," 
but  also  a  rare  genius  who  shared  with  Walt  Whitman 
"  the  honour  of  being  the  most  strictly  American 
writer  of  what  is  called  American  literature."  We 
read  in  a  review  of  A  Tramp  Abroad,  published  in 
The  Athenceum  in  1880  :  "  Mark  Twain  is  American 
pure  and  simple.  To  the  eastern  motherland  he 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          151 

owes  but  the  rudiments,  the  groundwork,  already 
archaic  and  obsolete  to  him,  of  the  speech  he  has  to 
write ;  in  his  turn  of  art,  his  literary  method  and 
aims,  his  intellectual  habit  and  temper,  he  is  as 
distinctly  national  as  the  Fourth  of  July."  Mark 
Twain  was  admired  because  he  was  "  a  literary 
artist  of  exceptional  skill  "  ;  and  it  was  ungrudgingly 
acknowledged  that  "  he  has  a  keen  sense  of  character 
and  uncommon  skill  in  presenting  it  dramatically  ; 
and  he  is  also  an  admirable  story-teller,  with  the 
anecdotic  instinct  and  habit  in  perfection,  and  with  a 
power  of  episodic  narrative  that  is  scarcely  equalled, 
if  at  all,  by  Mr.  Charles  Reade  himself."  Indeed, 
from  the  early  days  of  The  Innocents  Abroad,  the 
"  first  transatlantic  democratic  utterance  which 
found  its  way  into  the  hearing  of  the  mass  of  English 
people  "  ;  during  the  period  of  Tom  Sawyer,  "  the 
completest  boy  in  fiction,"  the  immortal  Huckleberry 
Finn,  "  the  standard  picaresque  novel  of  America — 
the  least  trammelled  piece  of  literature  in  the 
language,"  and  Life  on  the  Mississippi,  vastly  appreci 
ated  in  England  as  in  Germany  for  its  cultur-historisch 
value ;  down  to  the  day  when  Oxford  University 
bestowed  the  coveted  honour  of  its  degree  upon 
Mark  Twain,  and  all  England  took  him  to  their 
hearts  with  fervour  and  abandon — during  this  long 


152  MARK  TWAIN 

period  of  almost  four  decades,  Mark  Twain  progress 
ively  strengthened  his  hold  upon  the  imagination  of 
the  English  people  and,  like  Charles  Dickens  before 
him,  may  be  said  to  have  become  the  representative 
author  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  "  The  vast  majority 
of  readers  here  regard  him,"  said  Mr.  Sydney  Brooks 
in  1907,  "  to  a  degree  in  which  they  regard  no  other 
living  writer,  as  their  personal  friend,  and  love  him 
for  his  tenderness,  his  masculinity,  his  unfailing 
wholesomeness  even  more  than  for  his  humour." 
To  all  who  love  and  admire  Mark  Twain,  these  words 
in  which  he  was  welcomed  to  England  in  1907  should 
stand  as  a  symbol  of  that  racial  bond,  that  entente 
cordiale  of  blood  and  heart,  which  he  did  so  much 
to  strengthen  and  secure.  "  A  compliment  paid  to 
Mark  Twain  is  something  more  than  a  compliment 
to  a  great  man,  a  great  writer,  and  a  great  citizen. 
It  is  a  compliment  to  the  American  people,  and  one 
that  will  come  home  to  them  with  peculiar  gratifica 
tion.  .  .  .  The  feeling  for  Mark  Twain  among  his 
own  people  is  like  that  of  the  Scotch  for  Sir  Walter 
eighty  odd  years  ago,  or  like  that  of  our  fathers  for 
Charles  Dickens.  There  is  admiration  in  it,  gratitude, 
pride,  and,  above  all,  an  immense  and  intimate 
tenderness  of  affection.  To  writers  alone  it  is  given 
to  win  a  sentiment  of  this  quality — to  writers  and 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          153 

occasionally,  by  the  oddness  of  the  human  mind, 
to  generals.  Perhaps  one  would  best  take  the 
measure  of  the  American  devotion  to  Mark  Twain 
by  describing  it  as  a  compound  of  what  Dickens 
enjoyed  in  England  forty  years  ago,  and  of  what 
Lord  Roberts  enjoys  to-day,  and  by  adding  something 
thereto  for  the  intensity  of  all  transatlantic  emotions. 
The  '  popularity '  of  statesmen,  even  of  such  a 
statesman  as  President  Roosevelt,  is  a  poor  and 
flickering  light  by  the  side  of  this  full  flame  of 
personal  affection.  It  has  gone  out  to  Mark  Twain 
not  only  for  what  he  has  written,  for  the  clean, 
irresistible  extravagance  of  his  humour  and  his 
unfailing  command  of  the  primal  feelings,  for  his 
tenderness,  his  jollity,  and  his  power  to  read  the 
heart  of  boy  and  man  and  woman ;  not  only  for 
the  tragedies  and  afflictions  of  his  life  so  unconquer 
ably  borne  ;  not  only  for  his  brave  and  fiery  dashes 
against  tyranny,  humbug,  and  corruption  at  home 
and  abroad ;  but  also  because  his  countrymen  feel 
him  to  be,  beyond  all  other  men,  the  incarnation 
of  the  American  spirit." 

Mark  Twain  achieved  a  position  of  supreme 
eminence  as  a  representative  national  author  which 
is  without  a  parallel  in  the  history  of  American 
literature.  This  position  he  achieved  directly  by 


154  MARK  TWAIN 

his  appeal  to  the  great  mass  of  the  people,  despite 
the  dicta  of  the  literati.  At  a  time  when  England 
and  Europe  were  throwing  wide  the  doors  to  Mark 
Twain,  the  culture  of  his  own  land  was  regarding 
him  with  slighting  condescension,  or  with  mildly 
quizzical  unconcern.  Boston  regarded  him  with 
fastidious  and  frigid  disapproval,  Longfellow  and 
Lowell  found  little  in  him  to  admire  or  approve. 
There  were  notable  exceptions,  as  Mr.  Ho  wells  has 
recently  pointed  out — Charles  Eliot  Norton,  Professor 
Francis  J.  Child,  and  most  notable  of  all,  Mr.  Howells 
himself ;  but  in  general  it  is  true  that  "  in  pro 
portion  as  people  thought  themselves  refined  they 
questioned  that  quality  which  all  recognize  in 
him  now,  but  which  was  then  the  inspired  knowledge 
of  the  simple-hearted  multitude."  The  professors 
of  literature  regarded  Mark  Twain  as  an  author 
whose  works  were  essentially  ephemeral ;  and  stood 
in  the  breach  for  Culture  against  the  barbaric  in 
vasion  of  primitive  Western  Barbarism.  Professor 
W.  P.  Trent  was,  I  believe,  the  first  to  cite  Professor 
Richardson's  American  Literature  (published  in  1886) 
as  a  typical  instance  of  the  position  of  literary 
culture  in  regard  to  Mark  Twain.  "  But  there  is  a 
class  of  writers,"  we  read  in  that  work,  "  authors 
ranking  below  Irving  or  Lowell,  and  lacking  the 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          155 

higher  artistic  or  moral  purpose  of  the  greater 
humorists,  who  amuse  a  generation  and  then  pass 
from  sight.  Every  period  demands  a  new  manner 
of  jest,  after  the  current  fashion.  .  .  .  The  reigning 
favourites  of  the  day  are  Frank  R.  Stockton,  Joel 
Chandler  Harris,  the  various  newspaper  jokers, 
and  '  Mark  Twain.'  [Note  the  damning  position  /] 
But  the  creators  of  '  Pomona  '  and  '  Rudder  Grange,' 
of  6  Uncle  Remus  and  his  Folk-lore  Stories,'  and 
'  Innocents  Abroad,'  clever  as  they  are,  must  make 
hay  while  the  sun  shines.  Twenty  years  hence, 
unless  they  chance  to  enshrine  their  wit  in  some 
higher  literary  achievement,  their  unknown  suc 
cessors  will  be  the  privileged  comedians  of  the 
republic.  Humour  alone  never  gives  its  masters 
a  place  in  literature  ;  it  must  coexist  with  literary 
qualities,  and  must  usually  be  joined  with  such 
pathos  as  one  finds  in  Lamb,  Hood,  Irving,  or 
Holmes."  This  passage  stands  in  the  1892  edition 
of  that  work,  though  Tom  Sawyer  had  appeared  in 
1876,  The  Prince  and  the  Pauper  in  1882,  Life  on 
the  Mississippi  in  1883,  Huckleberry  Finn  in  1884, 
and  A  Connecticut  Yankee  in  King  Arthur's  Court 
in  1889.  Opinions  analogous  to  those  expressed 
in  the  passage  just  cited  have  found  frequent  ex 
pression  among  leaders  of  critical  opinion  in  America  ; 


MARK  TWAIN 

and  only  yesterday  The  Jumping  Frog  and  The 
Innocents  Abroad  were  seriously  put  forward,  by  a 
clever  and  popular  American  critic,  as  Mark  Twain's 
most  enduring  claims  upon  posterity !  A  bare 
half-dozen  men  in  the  ranks  of  American  literary 
criticism  have  recognized  and  eloquently  spoken 
forth  in  vindication  of  Mark  Twain's  title  as  a 
classic  author,  not  simply  of  American  literature, 
but  of  the  literature  of  the  world. 

It  is,  even  now,  perhaps  not  too  early  to  attempt 
some  sort  of  inquiry  into  the  causes  contributory 
to  Mark  Twain's  recognition  as  the  prime  repre 
sentative  of  contemporary  American  literature.  One 
of  the  cheap  catchwords  of  Mark  Twain  criticism 
is  the  statement  that  he  is  "  American  to  the  core," 
and  that  his  popular  appreciation  in  his  own  country 
was  due  to  the  fact  that  he  most  completely  em 
bodied  the  national  genius.  How  many  of  those 
who  confidently  advance  this  vastly  significant 
statement,  one  curiously  wonders,  have  seriously 
endeavoured  to  make  plain  to  others — or  even  to 
themselves — the  reasons  therefor  ?  Perhaps  in 
seeking  the  causes  for  Mark  Twain's  renown  in  his 
own  country  one  may  discover  the  causes  for  his 
world-wide  fame. 

A  map  of  the  United  States,  upon  which  were 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          157 

marked  the  localities  and  regions  made  famous  by 
the  writings  of  Mark  Twain,  would  show  that, 
geographically,  he  has  known  and  studied  this  vast 
country  in  all  the  grand  divisions  of  its  composition. 
Bred  from  old  Southern  stock,  born  in  the  South 
west,  he  passed  his  youth  upon  the  bosom  of  that 
great  natural  division  between  East  and  West,  the 
Mississippi  River,  which  cleaves  in  twain  the  very 
body  of  the  nation.  In  the  twenties  he  lost  the 
feeling  of  local  attachment  in  the  vast  democracy 
of  the  West,  and  looked  life — a  strangely  barbaric 
and  primitive  life — straight  in  the  face.  This  is 
the  first  great  transformation  in  his  life — behold 
the  Westerner  !  After  enriching  his  mind  through 
contact  with  civilizations  so  diverse  as  Europe  and 
the  Sandwich  Islands,  he  settled  down  in  Connecticut, 
boldly  foreswore  the  creeds  and  principles  of  his 
native  section,  and  underwent  a  new  transformation 
— behold  the  Yankee  !  Once  again,  travel  in  foreign 
lands,  association  with  the  most  intellectual  and 
cultured  circles  of  the  world,  broadened  his  vision ; 
yet  this  cosmopolitan  experience,  far  from  diminish 
ing  his  racial  consciousness,  tended  still  further  to 
accentuate  the  national  characteristics.  In  this 
new  transformation,  we  behold  the  typical 
American !  The  later  years,  of  cosmopolitan  re- 


158  MARK  TWAIN 

"—•— —.^ 

nown,  of  world-wide  fame,  throw  into  high  relief 
the  last  transformation — behold  the  universally 
human  spirit !  Under  this  crude  catalogue,  the 
main  lines  of  Mark  Twain's  development  stand 
out  in  sharp  definition.  The  catalogue,  however, 
is  only  too  crude — it  is  impossible  to  say  with 
precision  just  when  such  and  such  a  transformation 
actually  took  place.  It  is  only  intended  to  be 
suggestive  ;  for  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  Mark 
Twain  never  changed  character.  His  spirit  under 
went  an  evolutionary  process — broadening,  deepen 
ing,  enlarging  its  vision  with  the  passage  of  the 
years. 

The  part  which  the  South  played  in  the  formation 
of  the  character  and  genius  of  Mark  Twain  has  been 
little  noted  heretofore.  It  was  in  the  South  and 
Southwest  that  the  creator  of  the  humour  of  local 
eccentrics  first  appeared  in  full  flower ;  and  "  Ned 
Brace,"  "  Major  Jones,"  and  "  Sut  Lovengood " 
have  in  them  the  germs  of  that  later  Western  humour 
that  was  to  come  to  full  fruition  in  the  works  of 
Bret  Harte  and  Mark  Twain.  The  stage  coach 
and  the  river  steamboat  furnished  the  means  for 
disseminating  far  and  wide  the  gross,  the  ghastly, 
the  extravagant  stories,  the  oddities  of  speech,  the 
fantastic  jests  which  emerged  from  the  clash  of 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          159 

diverse  and  oddly -assorted  types.  The  jarring 
contrasts,  the  incongruities  and  surprises  daily 
furnished  by  the  picturesque  river  life  unquestion 
ably  stimulated  and  fertilized  the  latent  germs  of 
humour  in  the  young  cub -pilot,  Sam  Clemens. 
Through  Mark  Twain's  greatest  works  flows  the 
stately  Mississippi,  magically  imparting  to  them 
some  indefinable  share  of  its  beauty,  its  variety, 
its  majesty,  its  immensity  ;  and  there  is  no  exaggera 
tion  in  the  conclusion  that  it  is  the  greatest  natural 
influence  which  his  works  betray.  Reared  in  a 
slave-holding  community  of  narrow-visioned,  arro 
gantly  provincial  people  of  the  lower  middle  class  ; 
seeing  his  own  father  so  degrade  himself  as  to  cuff 
his  negro  house-boy  ;  consorting  with  ragamuffins, 
the  rag-tag  and  bob-tail  of  the  town,  in  his  passion 
for  bohemianism  and  truantry — young  Clemens 
never  learned  to  know  the  beauty  and  the  dignity, 
the  purity  and  the  humanity,  of  that  aristocratic 
patriarchal  South  which  produced  such  beautiful 
figures  as  Lee  and  Lanier.  Not  even  his  most 
enthusiastic  biographers  have  attempted  to  palliate, 
save  with  half-hearted  facetiousness,  his  inglorious 
desertion  of  the  cause  which  he  had  espoused.  Mark 
Twain  is  the  most  speedily  "  reconstructed  rebel  " 
on  record.  Is  it  broad-minded — or  even  accurate  ! 


160  MARK  TWAIN 

— for  Mr.  Ho  wells  to  say  of  Mark  Twain  :  "  No  one 
has  ever  poured  such  scorn  upon  the  second-hand, 
Walter-Scotticised,  pseudo- chivalry  of  the  Southern 
ideal  ?  v  Mark  Twain  never,  I  firmly  believe, 
held  up  to  ridicule  the  Southern  "  ideal."  But  in 
a  well-known  and  excellent  passage  in  Life  on  the 
Mississippi,  he  properly  pokes  fun  at  the  "  wordy, 
windy,  flowery  '  eloquence,'  romanticism,  senti 
mentality — all  imitated  from  Sir  Walter  Scott,"  of 
the  Southern  literary  journal  of  the  thirties  and 
forties.  In  later  years  Mark  Twain,  in  his  Joan  of 
Arc,  voiced  a  spirit  of  noble  chivalry  which  bespoke 
the  "  Southern  ideal "  of  his  Virginia  forbears ; 
and  that  delicacy  of  instinct  in  matters  of  right  and 
wrong  which  is  so  conspicuous  a  trait  of  Mark 
Twain's  is  a  symptom  of  that  "  moral  elegance  " 
which  Mr.  Owen  Wister  has  pronounced  to  be  one 
of  the  defining  characteristics  of  the  Southern 
American.  "  No  American  of  Northern  birth  or 
breeding,"  Mr.  Howells  pertinently  observes,  "  could 
have  imagined  the  spiritual  struggle  of  Huck  Finn 
in  deciding  to  help  the  negro  Jim  to  his  freedom, 
even  though  he  should  be  for  ever  despised  as  a 
negro  thief  in  his  native  town,  and  perhaps  eternally 
lost  through  the  blackness  of  his  sin.  No  Northerner 
could  have  come  so  close  to  the  heart  of  a  Kentucky 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          161 

feud,  and  revealed  it  so  perfectly,  with  the  whimsi 
cality  playing  through  its  carnage,  or  could  have 
so  brought  us  into  the  presence  of  the  sardonic 
comi-tragedy  of  the  squalid  little  river  town  where 
the  store-keeping  magnate  shoots  down  his  drunken 
tormentor  in  the  arms  of  the  drunkard's  daughter, 
and  then  cows  with  bitter  mockery  the  mob  that 
comes  to  lynch  him." 

The  influence  of  the  West  upon  the  character 
and  genius  of  Mark  Twain  is  momentous  and  un 
mistakable.  Mark  Twain  found  room  for  develop 
ment  and  expansion  in  the  primitive  freedom  of 
the  West.  It  was  here,  I  think,  that  there  were 
bred  in  him  that  breezy  democracy  of  sentiment 
and  that  hatred  of  sham  and  pretence  which  fill 
his  writings  from  beginning  to  end.  In  the  West, 
virgin  yet  recalcitrant,  every  man  stood — or  fell — 
by  force  of  his  own  exertions ;  every  man,  without 
fear  or  favour,  struggled  for  fortune,  for  competence 
— or  for  existence.  It  was  a  case  of  the  survival 
of  the  fittest.  In  face  of  bleak  Nature — the  burning 
alkali  desert,  the  obdurate  soil,  the  rock-ribbed 
mountains, — all  men  were  free  and  equal,  in  a 
camaraderie  of  personal  effort.  In  this  primitive 
democracy,  every  man  demanded  for  himself  what 
he  saw  others  getting.  The  pretender,  the  hypocrite, 


162  MARK  TWAIN 

the  sham,  the  humbug  soon  went  to  the  wall,  exposed 

in  the  nakedness  of  his  own  impotency.     Humour 

is  a  salutary  aid  in  the  struggle  of  the  individual 

with  the  contrasts  of  life ;  indeed  it  may  be  said  to 

be  born  of  the  perception  of  those  contrasts.     In 

a  degree  no  whit  inferior  to  the  variegated  river 

life,  the  life  of  the  West  furnished  contrasts  and 

incongruities  innumerable — vaster  perhaps,  and  more 

significant.     There   was   the   incessant   contrast   of 

civilization  with  barbarism,  of  the  East  with  the 

West ;    and  there  was  infinite  play  for  the  comic 

expose  of  the  credulous  "  tenderfoot  "  at  the  hands 

of  the  pitiless  cowboy.    Roars  of  Gargantuan  laughter 

shook   the   skies   as  each  new  initiate   unwittingly 

succumbed  to  the  demoniac  wiles  of  his  tormentors. 

The  West  was   one  vast  theatre  for  the  practice 

of    the     "  practical    joke."      Behind     everything, 

menacing,   foreboding,   tragic,    lay  the   stupendous 

contrast  between  Man   and   Nature ;    and  though 

the  miner,  the  granger,  the  cowboy  laughed  defiantly 

at  civilization  and  at  Nature,  there  crept  into  the 

consciousness   of  each  the   conviction  that,  in  the 

long  run,  civilization  must  triumph,  and  that,  in 

order  to  win  success,  Nature  must  be  conquered  and 

subdued.     In  such  an  environment,  with  its  spirit  of 

primitive  democracy,   its   atmosphere  of   wild   and 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          163 

ribald  jest,  its  contempt  for  the  impostor,  its  per 
petually  recurring  incongruities,  and  behind  all 
the  solemn,  perhaps  tragic,  presence  of  inexorable 
Nature — in  such  an  environment  were  sharpened 
and  whetted  in  Mark  Twain  the  sense  of  humour, 
the  spirit  of  real  democracy  bred  of  competitive 
effort,  and  the  hatred  for  pretence,  sham,  and 
imposture. 

It  was  not,  I  think,  until  Mark  Twain  went  to 
live  in  Connecticut  and,  as  he  expressed  it,  became 
a  scribbler  of  books,  and  an  immovable  fixture 
among  the  other  rocks  of  New  England,  that  he 
developed  complete  confidence  in  himself  and  his 
powers.  That  passion  for  successful  self-expression, 
which  Mr.  Nicholas  Murray  Butler  has  defined 
as  the  main  ambition  of  the  American,  became 
the  dominant  motive  of  Mark  Twain's  life.  Of  his 
experience  as  a  steamboat  pilot,  Mark  Twain  has 
said  that  in  that  brief,  sharp  schooling  he  got  person 
ally  and  familiarly  acquainted  with  about  all  the 
different  types  of  human  nature  that  are  to  be  found 
in  fiction,  biography  or  history.  In  the  West  he  had 
still  further  enriched  his  mind  with  an  inexhaustible 
store  of  first-hand  knowledge  of  human  nature. 
In  rotation  he  had  been  tramping  jour  printer, 
river  pilot,  private  secretary,  miner,  reporter, 


164  MARK  TWAIN 

lecturer.  He  now  turns  to  literature  in  real  earnest, 
and  begins  to  display  that  vast  store  of  knowledge 
derived  from  actual  contact  with  the  infinitely 
diversified  realities  of  American  life.  Mark  Twain 
takes  on  more  and  more  of  the  characteristics  of  the 
Yankee — those  characteristics  which  constitute  the 
basis  of  his  success  :  inventiveness  and  ingenuity, 
the  practical  efficiency,  the  shrewdness  and  the  hard 
common-sense.  It  is  the  last  phase  in  the  formation 
of  the  national  type. 

It  was,  I  venture  to  say,  in  some  such  way  as 
this  that  Mark  Twain  came  to  assume  in  the  eyes 
of  his  countrymen  an  embodiment  of  the  national 
spirit.  He  was  the  self-made  man  in  the  self-made 
democracy.  He  was  at  once  his  own  creation  and 
the  creation  of  a  democracy.  There  were  humorists 
in  America  before  Mark  Twain  ;  there  are  humorists 
in  America  still.  But  Mark  Twain  succeeded  not 
merely  in  captivating  the  great  mass  of  the  people ; 
he  achieved  the  far  more  difficult  and  unique  dis 
tinction  of  convincing  his  countrymen  of  his  essential 
fellowship,  his  temperamental  affinity,  with  them. 
This  miracle  he  wrought  by  the  frankest  and  most 
straightforward  revelation  of  the  actual  experiences 
in  his  own  life  and  the  lives  of  those  he  had  known 
with  perfect  intimacy.  It  is  true  that  he  wrote  a 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS         165 

few  books  dealing  with  other  times,  other  scenes, 
than  our  own  in  the  present  and  in  America.  But 
I  daresay  that  his  popularity  with  the  mass  of  his 
countrymen  would  not  have  been  in  any  degree 
lessened  had  he  never  written  these  few  books. 
Indeed,  it  is  hardly  to  be  doubted  that  his  books 
were  successful  in  the  ratio  of  their  autobiographic 
nature.  For  the  character  he  revealed  in  those 
books  of  his  which  are  essentially  autobiographic, 
is  the  character  dear  to  the  American  heart ;  and 
the  experiences,  vicissitudes,  and  hardships,  shot 
through  and  irradiated  with  a  high  boisterousness 
of  humour,  found  a  joyous  sympathy  in  the  minds 
and  hearts  of  men  who  had  all  "  been  there  "  them 
selves.  In  Mark  Twain  the  American  people  recog 
nized  at  last  the  sturdy  democrat,  independent  of 
foreign  criticism ;  confident  in  the  validity  and 
value  of  his  own  ideas  and  judgments  ;  believing 
loyally  in  his  country's  institutions,  and  upholding 
them  fearlessly  before  the  world ;  fundamentally 
serious  and  self-reliant,  yet  with  a  practicality 
tempered  by  humane  kindliness,  warmth  of  heart, 
and  a  strain  of  persistent  idealism  ;  rude,  boisterous, 
even  uncouth,  yet  withal  softened  by  sympathy  for 
the  under- dog,  a  boundless  love  for  the  weak,  the 
friendless,  the  oppressed ;  lacking  in  profound 


166  MARK  TWAIN 

intellectuality,  yet  supreme  in  the  possession  of  the 
simple  and  homely  virtues — an  upright  and  honour 
able  character,  a  good  citizen,  a  man  tenacious  of 
the  sanctity  of  the  domestic  virtues.  America  has 
produced  finer  and  more  exalted  types — giants  in 
intellectuality,  princes  in  refinement  and  delicacy 
of  spirit,  savants  in  culture,  classics  in  authorship. 
An  American  type  combining  culture  with  pictur- 
esqueness,  refinement  with  patriotism,  suavity  with 
self-reliance,  desire  it  as  we  may,  still  awaits  the 
imprimatur  of  international  recognition.  America 
has  sufficient  cause  for  gratification  in  the  memory 
of  that  quaint  and  sturdy  figure  so  conspicuously 
bearing  the  national  stamp  and  superscription. 
Perhaps  no  American  has  equalled  Mark  Twain  in 
the  quality  of  subsuming  and  embodying  in  his  own 
character  so  many  elements  of  the  national  spirit 
and  genius.  In  letters,  in  life,  Mark  Twain  is  the 
American  par  excellence. 

Underneath  those  qualities  which  combined  to 
produce  in  Mark  Twain  a  composite  American  type, 
lay  something  deeper  still — that  indefinable  je  ne 
sals  quoi  which  procured  him  international  fame. 
Humour  alone  is  utterly  inadequate  for  achieving 
so  momentous  a  result — though  humour  ostensibly 
constituted  the  burden  of  the  appeal.  As  a  matter 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          167 

of  fact,  vehemently  as  the  professors  may  deny  it, 
Mark  Twain  was  an  artist  of  remarkable  force  and 
power.  From  the  days  when  he  came  under  the 
tutelage  of  Mr.  Howells,  and  humbly  learned  to 
prune  away  his  stylistic  superfluities  of  the  grosser 
sort,  Mark  Twain  indubitably  began  to  subject 
himself  to  the  discipline  of  stern  self-criticism. 
While  it  is  true  that  he  never  learned  to  realize  in 
full  measure,  to  use  Pater's  phrase,  "  the  responsi 
bility  of  the  artist  to  his  materials,"  he  assuredly 
disciplined  himself  to  make  the  most,  in  his  own 
way,  of  the  rude  and  volcanic  power  which  he  pos 
sessed.  It  is  fortunate  that  Mark  Twain  never 
subjected  himself  to  the  refinements  of  academic 
culture ;  a  Harvard  might  well  have  spoiled  a  great 
author.  For  Mark  Twain  had  a  memorable  tale  to 
tell  of  rude,  primitive  men  and  barbaric,  remote 
scenes  and  circumstances  ;  of  truant  and  resourceful 
boyhood  exercising  all  its  cunning  in  circumventing 
circumstance  and  mastering  a  calling.  And  he  had 
that  tale  to  tell  in  the  unlettered,  yet  vastly  ex 
pressive,  phraseology  of  the  actors  in  those  wild 
events.  The  secret  of  his  style  is  directness  of 
thought,  a  sort  of  shattering  clarity  of  utterance, 
and  a  mastery  of  vital,  vigorous,  audacious  individual 
expression.  He  had  a  remarkable  feeling  for  words 


168  MARK  TWAIN 

and  their  uses  ;  and  his  language  is  the  unspoiled, 
expressive  language  of  the  people.  At  times  he  is 
primitive  and  coarse  ;  but  it  is  a  Falstaffian  note,  the 
mark  of  universality  rather  than  of  limitation.  His 
art  was,  in  Tolstoy's  phrase,"  the  art  of  a  people — 
universal  art  "  ;  and  his  style  was  rich  in  the  locutions 
of  the  common  people,  rich  and  racy  of  the  soil.  A 
signal  merit  of  his  style  is  its  admirable  adaptation  to 
the  theme.  The  personages  of  his  novels  always 
speak  "  in  character  "  —with  perfect  reproduction, 
not  only  of  their  natural  speech,  but  also  of  their 
natural  thoughts.  Though  Mr.  Henry  James  may 
have  said  that  one  must  be  a  very  rudimentary  person 
to  enjoy  Mark  Twain,  there  is  unimpeachable  virtue 
in  a  rudimentary  style  in  treatment  of  rudimentary 
or, — as  I  should  prefer  to  phrase  it, — fundamental 
things.  Mr.  James,  I  feel  sure,  could  never  have  put 
into  the  mouth  of  a  "  rudimentary  "  person  like 
Huck,  so  vivid  and  graphic  a  description  of  a  storm 
with  its  perfect  reproduction  of  the  impression 
caught  by  the  "  rudimentary "  mind.  "  Writers 
of  fiction,"  says  Sir  Walter  Besant  in  speaking  of  this 
book,  "  will  understand  the  difficulty  of  getting  inside 
the  brain  of  that  boy,  seeing  things  as  he  saw  them, 
writing  as  he  would  have  written,  and  acting  as 
he  would  have  acted ;  and  presenting  to  the  world 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS         169 

true,  faithful,  and  living  effigies  of  that  boy.  The 
feat  has  been  accomplished ;  there  is  no  character  in 
fiction  more  fully,  more  faithfully,  presented  than 
the  character  of  Huckleberry  Finn.  ...  It  may  be 
objected  that  the  characters  are  extravagant.  Not 
so.  They  are  all  exactly  and  literally  true ;  they 
are  quite  possible  in  a  country  so  remote  and  so 
primitive.  Every  figure  in  the  book  is  a  type; 
Huckleberry  Finn  has  exaggerated  none.  We  see 
the  life — the  dull  and  vacuous  life — of  a  small 
township  upon  the  Mississippi  River  forty  years  ago. 
So  far  as  I  know,  it  is  the  only  place  where  we  can 
find  that  phase  of  life  portrayed." 

Mark  Twain  impressed  one  always  as  writing 
with  utter  individuality  —  untrammelled  by  the 
limitations  of  any  particular  sect  of  art.  In  his 
books  of  travel,  he  reveals  not  only  the  instinct  of 
the  trained  journalist  for  the  novel  and  the  effective, 
but  also  the  feeling  of  the  artist  for  the  beautiful, 
the  impressive,  and  the  sublime.  His  descriptions, 
of  striking  natural  objects,  such  as  the  volcano  of 
Mount  Kilauea  in  the  Sandwich  Islands,  of  memor 
able  architecture,  such  as  the  cathedral  at  Milan, 
show  that  he  possessed  the  "  stereoscopic  imagina 
tion  "  in  rare  degree.  The  picture  he  evokes  of 
Athens  by  moonlight,  in  the  language  of  sim- 


170  MARK  TWAIN 

plicity  and  restraint,  ineffaceably  fixes  itself  in  the 
fancy. 

Mark  Twain  was  regarded  in  France  as  a  remark 
able  "impressionist"  and  praised  by  the  critics 
for  the  realistic  accuracy  and  minuteness  of  his 
delineation.  Kipling  frankly  acknowledged  the  great 
debt  that  he  owed  him.  Tennyson  spoke  in  high 
praise  of  his  finesse  in  the  choice  of  words,  his 
feeling  for  the  just  word  to  catch  and,  as  it  were, 
visualize  the  precise  shade  of  meaning  desired.  In 
truth,  Mark  Twain  was  an  impressionist,  rather  than 
an  imaginative  artist.  That  passage  in  A  Yankee  in 
King  Arthur's  Court  in  which  he  describes  an  early 
morning  ride  through  the  forest,  pictorially  evocative 
as  it  is,  stands  self-revealed — a  confusedly  imagina 
tive  effort  to  create  an  image  he  has  never  experienced. 

If  we  set  over  beside  this  the  remarkable  de 
scriptions  of  things  seen,  as  minutely  evocative  as 
instantaneous  photographs — such,  for  example,  as 
the  picture  of  a  summer  storm,  or  preferably,  the 
picture  of  dawn  on  the  Mississippi,  both  from 
Huckleberry  Finn — pictures  Mark  Twain  had  seen 
and  lived  hundreds  of  times,  we  see  at  once  the 
striking  superiority  of  the  realistic  impressionist 
over  the  imaginative  artist. 

I  have  always  felt  that  the  most  lasting  influence 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS         171 

of  his  life — the  influence  which  has  left  the  most 
pervasive  impression  upon  his  art  and  thought — 
is  portrayed  in  that  classic  and  memorable  passage 
in  which  he  portrays  the  marvellous  spell  laid  upon 
him  by  that  mistress  of  his  youth,  the  great  river. 

To  the  young  pilot,  the  face  of  the  water  in  time 
became  a  wonderful  book.  For  the  uninitiated 
traveller  it  was  a  dead  language,  but  to  the  young 
pilot  it  gave  up  its  most  cherished  secrets.  He  came 
to  feel  that  there  had  never  been  so  wonderful  a 
book  written  by  man.  To  its  haunting  beauty,  its 
enfolding  mystery,  he  yielded  himself  unreservedly — 
drinking  it  in  like  one  bewitched.  But  a  day  came 
when  he  began  to  cease  from  noting  its  marvels. 
Another  day  came  when  he  ceased  altogether  to  note 
them. 

In  time,  he  came  to  realize  that,  for  him,  the 
romance  and  the  beauty  were  gone  forever  from 
the  river.  If  the  early  rapture  was  gone,  in  its  place 
was  the  deeper  sense  of  knowledge  and  intimacy. 
He  had  learned  the  ultimate  secrets  of  the  river — 
learned  them  with  a  knowledge,  so  searching  and  so 
profound,  that  he  was  enabled  to  give  them  the 
enduring  investiture  of  art. 

Mark  Twain  possessed  the  gift  of  innate  eloquence. 
He  was  a  master  of  the  art  of  moving,  touching, 


172  MARK  TWAIN 

swaying  an  audience.  At  times,  his  insight  into 
the  mysterious  springs  of  humour,  of  passion,  and 
of  pathos  seemed  almost  like  divination.  All  these 
qualities  appeared  in  full  flower  in  the  written 
expression  of  his  art.  It  would  be  doing  a  disservice 
to  his  memory  to  deny  that  his  style  did  not  possess 
literary  distinction  or  elegance.  At  times  his  judg 
ment  was  at  fault ;  his  constitutional  humour  came 
near  playing  havoc  with  his  artistic  sense.  Not 
seldom  he  was  long-winded  and  laborious  in  his 
striving  after  comic  effect.  To  offset  these  manifest 
lapses  and  defects  there  are  the  many  fine  qualities 
— descriptive  passages  aglow  with  serene  and  cloud 
less  beauty,  dramatic  scenes  depicted  with  virile 
and  rugged  eloquence,  pathetic  incidents  touched 
with  gentle  and  caressing  tenderness. 

Style  bears  translation  ill ;  in  fact,  translation 
is  not  infrequently  impossible.  But  Mr.  Clemens 
once  pointed  out  to  me  that  humour  has  nothing  to 
do  with  style.  Mark  Twain's  humour — for  humour 
is  his  prevalent  mood — has  international  range  since, 
constructed  out  of  a  deep  comprehension  of  human 
nature  and  a  profound  sympathy  for  human  relation 
ship  and  human  failing,  it  successfully  surmounts  the 
difficulties  of  translation  into  alien  tongues. 

Mark  Twain  became  a  great  international  figure, 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS         173 

not  because  he  was  an  American,  paradoxical  and 
unpatriotic  as  that  may  sound,  but  because  he  was 
America's  greatest  cosmopolitan.  He  was  a  true 
cosmopolitan  in  the  Higginsonian  sense,  in  that, 
unlike  Mr.  Henry  James,  he  was  "  at  home  even  in 
his  own  country."  He  was  a  true  cosmopolitan 
in  the  Tolstoy  an  sense ;  for  his  was  "  art  trans 
mitting  the  simplest  feelings  of  common  life,  but 
such,  always,  as  are  accessible  to  all  men  in  the 
whole  world — the  art  of  common  life — the  art  of  a 
people — universal  art."  His  spirit  grasped  the  true 
ideal  of  our  time  and  reflected  it. 

Mr.  Clemens  attributed  his  international  success 
not  to  qualities  of  style,  not  to  allegiance  to  any 
distinctive  school,  not  to  any  overtopping  eminence 
of  intellect.  "  Many  so-called  American  humorists," 
he  once  remarked  to  me,  "  have  been  betrayed  by 
their  preoccupation  with  the  local.  Their  work 
never  crossed  frontiers  because  they  failed  to 
impart  to  their  humour  that  universal  element 
which  appeals  to  all  races  of  men.  Realism  is 
nothing  more  than  close  observation.  But  observa 
tion  will  never  give  you  the  inside  of  the  thing.  The 
life,  the  genius,  the  soul  of  a  people  are  realized  only 
through  years  of  absorption."  Mr.  Clemens  assever 
ated  that  the  only  way  to  be  a  great  American 


174  MARK  TWAIN 

humorist  was  to  be  a  great  human  humorist — to 
discover  in  Americans  those  permanent  and  universal 
traits  common  to  all  nationalities.  In  his  com 
mentary  upon  Bourget's  Outre  Mer,  he  declared  that 
there  wasn't  a  single  human  characteristic  that  could 
safely  be  labelled  "  American  "  —not  a  single  human 
detail,  inside  or  outside.  Through  years  of  automatic 
observation,  Mark  Twain  learned  to  discover  for 
America,  to  adapt  his  own  phrase,  those  few 
human  peculiarities  that  can  be  generalized  and 
located  here  and  there  in  the  world  and  named  by  the 
name  of  the  nation  where  they  are  found. 

Above  all,  I  think,  Mark  Twain  sympathized 
with  and  found  something  to  admire  in  the  citizens 
of  every  nation,  seeking  beneath  the  surface  veneer 
the  universal  traits  of  that  nation's  humanity.  He 
expressly  disclaimed  in  my  presence  any  "  attitude  " 
toward  the  world,  for  the  very  simple  reason  that  his 
relation  toward  all  peoples  had  been  one  of  effort 
at  comprehension  of  their  ideals,  and  identification 
with  them  in  feeling.  He  disavowed  any  colour 
prejudices,  caste  prejudices,  or  creed  prejudices — 
maintaining  that  he  could  stand  any  society.  All 
that  he  cared  to  know  was  that  a  man  was  a  human 
being — that  was  bad  enough  for  him  !  It  is  a  matter 
not  of  argument,  but  of  fact,  that  Mark  Twain  has 


THE  WORLD-FAMED  GENIUS          175 

made  more  damaging  admissions  concerning  America 
than  concerning  any  other  nation.  Lafcadio  Hearn 
best  succeeded  in  interpreting  poetry  to  his  Japanese 
students  by  freeing  it  from  all  artificial  and  local 
restraints,  and  using  as  examples  the  simplest  lyrics 
which  go  straight  to  the  heart  and  soul  of  man. 
His  remarkable  lecture  on  Naked  Poetry  is  the 
most  signal  illustration  of  his  profoundly  suggestive 
mode  of  interpretation.  In  the  same  way,  Mark 
Twain  as  humorist  has  sought  the  highest  common 
factor  of  all  nations.  "  My  secret — if  there  is  any 
secret — ,"  Mr.  Clemens  once  said  to  me,  "is  to 
create  humour  independent  of  local  conditions. 
In  studying  humanity  as  exhibited  in  the  people 
and  localities  I  best  knew  and  understood,  I  have 
sought  to  winnow  out  the  encumbrance  of  the  local." 
And  he  significantly  added — musingly — "  Humour, 
like  morality,  has  its  eternal  verities" 

To  the  literature  of  the  world,  I  venture  to  say, 
Mark  Twain  has  contributed :  his  masterpiece,  that 
provincial  Odyssey  of  the  Mississippi,  Huckleberry 
Finn,  a  picaresque  romance  worthy  to  rank  with 
the  very  best  examples  of  picaresque  fiction ; 
Tom  Sawyer,  only  little  inferior  to  its  pendent  story, 
which  might  well  be  regarded  as  the  supreme 
American  morality-play  of  youth,  Everyboy ;  The 


176  MARK  TWAIN 

Man  that  Corrupted  Hadleyburg,  an  ironic  fable  of 
such  originality  and  dexterous  creation  that  it 
has  no  satisfactory  parallel  in  literature ;  the 
first  half  of  Life  on  the  Mississippi  and  all  of 
Roughing  It,  for  their  reflections  of  the  sociological 
phases  of  a  civilization  now  vanished  forever.  It  is 
gratifying  to  Americans  to  recognize  in  Mark  Twain 
the  incarnation  of  democratic  America.  It  is  grati 
fying  to  citizens  of  all  nationalities  to  recall  and  re 
capture  the  pleasure  and  delight  his  works  have 
given  them  for  decades.  It  is  more  gratifying  still 
to  rest  confident  in  the  belief  that,  in  Mark  Twain, 
America  has  contributed  to  the  world  a  genius  sealed 
of  the  tribe  of  Moliere,  a  congener  of  Le  Sage,  of 
Fielding,  of  Defoe — a  man  who  will  be  remembered, 
as  Mr.  Ho  wells  has  said,  "  with  the  great  humorists 
of  all  time,  with  Cervantes,  with  Swift,  or  with  any 
others  worthy  his  company ;  none  of  them  was 
his  equal  in  humanity." 


V.    PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST 


M 


"Diligently  train  your  ideals  upward  and  still  upward 
towards  a  summit  where  you  will  find  your  chiefest  pleasure 
in  conduct  which,  while  contenting  you,  will  be  sure  to  confer 
benefits  upon  your  neighbour  and  the  community." 

MARK  TWAIN  :    What  is  Man  ? 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST 

"  THE  humorous  writer,"  says  Thackeray,  "  professes 
to  awaken  and  direct  your  love,  your  pity,  your 
kindness,  your  scorn  for  untruth,  pretension,  and 
imposture,  your  tenderness  for  the  weak,  the  poor, 
the  oppressed,  the  unhappy.  To  the  best  of  his 
means  and  ability  he  comments  on  all  the  ordinary 
actions  and  passions  of  life  almost.  He  takes  upon 
himself  to  be  the  weejk^day^preacher,  so  to  speak. 
Accordingly,  as  he  finds,  and  speaks,  and  feels  the 
truth  best,  we  regard  him,  esteem  him — sometimes 
love  him."  This  definition  is  apt  enough  to  have 
been  made  with  Mark  Twain  in  mind.  In  an  earlier 
chapter,  is  displayed  the  comic  phase  of  Mark  Twain's 
humour.  Beneath  that  humour,  underlying  it  and 
informing  it,  is  a  fund  of  human  concern,  a  wealth 
of  seriousness  and  pathos,  and  a  universality  of 
interests  which  argue  real  power  and  greatness. 
These  qualities,  now  to  be  discussed,  reveal  Mark 
Twain  as  serious  enough  to  be  regarded  as  a  real 
moralist  and  philosopher,  humane  enough  to  be 

179 


180  MARK  TWAIN 

regarded     as,    in     spirit,    a     true     sociologist    and 
reformer. 

It  must  be  recognised  that  the  history  of  literature 
furnishes  forth  no  great  international  figure,  whose 
fame  rests  solely  upon  the  basis  of  humour,  however 
human,  however  sympathetic,  however  universal 
that  humour  may  be.  Behind  that  humour  must 
lurk  some  deeper  and  more  serious  implication 
which  gives  breadth  and  solidity  to  the  art-product. 
Genuine  humour,  as  Landor  has  pointed  out,  re 
quires  a  "  sound  and  capacious  mind,  which  is 
always  a  grave  one."  There  is  always  a  breadth  of 
philosophy,  a  depth  of  sadness,  or  a  profundity  of 
pathos  in  the  very  greatest  humorists.  Both 
Rabelais  and  La  Fontaine  were  reflective  dreamers ; 
Cervantes  fought  for  the  progressive  and  the  real 
in  pricking  the  bubble  of  Spanish  chivalry ;  and 
Moliere  declared  that,  for  a  man  in  his  position,  he 
could  do  no  better  than  attack  the  vices  of  his  time 
with  ridiculous  likenesses.  Though  exhibiting  little 
of  the  melancholy  of  Lincoln,  Mark  Twain  revelled 
in  the  same  directness  of  thought  and  expression, 
showed  the  same  zest  for  broad  humour  reeking  with 
the  strong  but  pungent  flavour  of  the  soil.  Though 
expressing  distaste  for  Franklin's  somewhat  cold  and 
almost  mercenary  injunctions,  Mark  Twain  never- 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    181 

theless  has  much  of  his  Yankee  thrift,  shrewdness, 
and  bed-rock  common  sense.  Beneath  and  com 
mingled  with  all  his  boyish  and  exuberant  fun  is  a 
note  of  pathos  subdued  but  unmistakable,  which 
rings  true  beside  the  forced  and  extravagant  pathos 
of  Dickens.  His  Southern  hereditament  of  chivalry, 
his  compassion  for  the  oppressed  and  his  defence 
of  the  down-trodden,  were  never  in  abeyance  from 
the  beginning  of  his  career  to  the  very  end.  jLike_ 
Joel  Chandler  Harris,  that  genial  master  of  African  — 
folk-lore,  Mark  Twain  found  no  theme  of  such  ^ 

absorbing  interest  as  human  nature.  Like  Fielding, 
he  wrote  immortal  narratives  in  which  the  prime 
concern  is  not  the  "  story,"  but  the  almost  scientific 
revelation  of  the  natural  history  of  the  characters. 
The  corrosive  and  mordant  irony  of  many  a  passage  in 
r  Mark  Twain,  wherein  he  holds  up  to  scorn  the  fraudu-  JNr^^-^" 
lent  and  the  artificial,  the  humbug,  the  hypocrite, 
thersetisualist,  are  not  unworthy  of  the  colossal  Swift. 
That  "disposition  for  hard  hitting  with  a  moral 
purpose  to  sanction  it,"  which  George  Meredith  pro 
nounces  the  national  disposition  of  British  humour, 
is  Mark  Twain's  unmistakable  hereditament.  It  is, 
perhaps,  because  he  relates  us  to  our  origins,  as  Mr. 
Brander  Matthews  has  suggested,  that  Mark  Twain 
is  the  foremost  of  American  humorists. 


MARK  TWAIN 

In  the  preface  to  the  Jumping  Frog,  published  as 
far  back  as  1867,  Mark  Twain  was  dubbed,  not 
only  "  the  wild  humorist  of  the  Pacific  slope,"  but  also 
"  the  moralist  of  the  Main."  The  first  book  which 
brought  him  great  popularity,  The  Innocents  Abroad, 
exhibited  qualities  of  serious  ethical  import  which, 
while  escaping  the  attention  of  the  readers  of  that 
day,  emerge  for  the  moderns  from  the  welter  of 
hilarious  humour.  How  unforgettable  is  his  righteous 
indignation  over  that  "  benefit "  performance  he 
witnessed  in  Italy ! 

The  ingrained  quality  in  Mark  Twain,  which 
perhaps  more  than  any  other  won  the  enthusiastic 
admiration  of  his  fellow  Americans,  was  this :  he 
always  had  the  courage  of  his  convictions.  He 
writes  of  things,  classic  and  hallowed  by  centuries, 
with  a  freshness  of  viewpoint,  a  total  indifference 
to  crystallized  opinion,  that  inspire  tremendous 
respect  for  his  courage,  even  when  one's  own  con 
victions  are  not  engaged.  The  ;c  beautiful  love 
story  of  Abelard  and  Heloise  "  will  never,  I  venture 
to  say,  recover  its  pristine  glory — now  that  Mark 
Twain  has  poured  over  Abelard  the  vials  of  his  wrath. 

Those  who  know  only  the  Mark  Twain  of  the 
latter  years,  with  his  deep,  underlying  seriousness, 
his  grim  irony,  and  his  passion  for  justice  and 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    183 

truth,  find  difficulty  in  realizing  that,  in  his  earlier 
days,  the  joker  and  the  buffoon  were  almost  solely 
in  evidence.  In  answer  to  a  query  of  mine  as  to 
the  reason  for  the  serious  spirit  that  crept  into  and 
gave  carrying  power  to  his  humour,  Mr.  Clemens 
frankly  replied  :  "I  never  wrote  a  serious  word 
until  after  I  married  Mrs.  Clemens.  She  is  solely 
responsible — to  her  shoulo!  goTEKe  credit — for  any 
deeply  serious  or  moral  influence  my  subsequent 
work  may  exert.  After  my  marriage,  she  edited 
everything  I  wrote.  And  what  is  more— she  not 
only  edited  my  works,  she  edited  me !  After  I 
had  written  some  side-splitting  story,  something 
beginning  seriously  and  ending  in  preposterous 
anti- climax,  she  would  say  to  me :  '  You  have 
a  true  lesson,  a  serious  meaning  ta  impart  here. 
Don't  give  way  to  your  invincible  temptation 
to  destroy  the  good  effect  of  your  story  by 
some  extravagantly  comic  absurdity.  Be  yourself  ! 
Speak  out  your  real  thoughts  as  humorously  as 
you  please,  but  —  without  farcical  commentary. 
Don't-destroy  your  purpose  with  an  ill-timed  joke.' 
|l  learned  from  her  that  the  only  right  thing  was  to 
get  in  my  serious  meaning  always,  to  treat  my 
audience  fairly,  to  let  them  really  feel  the  underlying 
moral  that  gave  body  and  essence  to  my  jest." 


184  MARK  TWAIN 

The  quality  with  which  Mark  Twain  invests  his 
disquisitions  upon  morals,  upon  conscience,  upon 
human  foibles  and  failings,  is  the  charm  of  the 
humorist  always — never  the  grimness  of  the.  moralist 
or  the  coldness  of  the  philosopher.  He  observes 
all  human  traits,  whether  of  moral  sophistry  or 
ethical  casuistry,  with  the  genial  sympathy  of  a 
lover  of  his  kind  irradiated  with  the  riant  com 
prehension  of  the  humorist.  And  yet  at  times  there 
creeps  into  his  tone  a  note  of  sincere  and  manly 
pathos,  unmistakable,  irresistible.  One  has  only 
to  read  the  beautiful,  tender  tale  of  the  blue  jay  in 
A  Tramp  Abroad  to  know  the  beauty  and  the  depth 
of  his  feeling  for  nature  and  her  creatures,  his  sense 
of  kinship  with  his  brothers  of  the  animal  kingdom. 

In  our  first  joyous  and  headlong  interest  in  the 
narrative  of  Huckleberry  Finn,  its  rapid  succession 
of  continuously  arresting  incidents,  its  omnipresent 
yet  never  intrusive  humour,  the  deeper  significance 
of  many  a  passage  in  that  contemporary  classic 
is  likely  to  escape  notice.  Sir  Walter  Besant,  who 
revelled  in  it  as  one  of  the  most  completely  satisfying 
and  delightful  of  books,  speaks  of  it  deliberately 
as  a  book  without  a  moral.  Perhaps  he  was  deceived 
by  the  foreword  :  "  Persons  attempting  to  find  a 
motive  in  this  narrative  will  be  prosecuted  ;  persons 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    185 

attempting  to  find  a  moral  in  it  will  be  banished ; 
persons  attempting  to  find  a  plot  in  it  will  be  shot." 
There  never  was  a  more  easy-going,  care-free,  un- 
puritanical  lot  than  Huck  and  Jim,  the  two  farcical 
"  hoboes,"  Tom  Sawyer,  and  the  rest.  And  yet  in 
the  light  of  Mark  Twain's  later  writings  one  cannot 
but  see  in  that  picaresque  romance,  with  its  pleasingly 
loose  moral  atmosphere,  an  underlying  seriousness 
and  conviction.  Jim  is  a  simple,  harmless  negro, 
childlike  and  primitive ;  yet,  so  marvellous,  so  re 
strained  is  the  art  of  the  narrator,  that  imperceptibly, 
unconsciously,  one  comes  to  feel  not  only  a  deep  in 
terest  in,  but  a  genuine  respect  for,  this  innocent 
fugitive  from  slavery.  Mr.  Booker  Washington, 
a  distinguished  representative  of  his  race,  said  he 
could  not  help  feeling  that,  in  the  character  of  Jim, 
Mark  Twain  had,  perhaps  unconsciously,  exhibited 
his  sympathy  for  and  interest  in  the  masses  of  the 
negro  people. 

Indeed,  to  the  reflective  mind — and  it  is  to  be 
presumed  that  by  that  standard  Mark  Twain's 
works  will  ultimately  be  judged — there  is  no  more 
significant  passage  t&JIuckleberry  Finn  than  that  in 
which  Huck  struggles  with  his  conscience  over  the 
knotty  problem  of  his  moral  responsibility  for  com 
passing  Jim's  emancipation.  Nothing  else  is  needed 


186  MARK  TWAIN 

to  show  at  once  Mark  Twain's  preoccupation  with 
the  workings  of  human  conscience  in  the  unso 
phisticated  mind  and  his  conviction  that,  with  the 
"lights  that  he  had,"  Huck  was  justified  in  his 
courageous  decision. 

Huck  felt  deeply  repentant  for  allowing  Jim  to 
escape  from  the  innocent,  inoffending  Miss  Watson. 
He  became  consumed  with  horror  and  remorse  to 
hear  Jim  making  plans  for  stealing  his  wife  and 
children,  if  their  masters  wouldn't  sell  them.  His 
conscience  kept  stirring  him  up  hotter  than  ever 
when  he  heard  Jim  talking  to  himself  about  the 
joys  of  freedom.  After  awhile,  Huck  decided  to 
write  a  letter  to  Miss  Watson,  informing  her  of 
the  whereabouts  of  her  "  runaway  nigger."  After 
writing  that  letter,  he  felt  washed  clean  of  sin, 
uplifted,  exalted.  But  he  could  not  forget  all  the 
goodness  and  tenderness  of  poor  Jim,  who  had  shown 
himself  so  profoundly  grateful.  Though  he  faced 
the  torments  of  Puritanical  damnation  as  a  con 
sequence,  he  resolved  to  let  Jim  go  free.  Humanity 
triumphed  over  conscience — and  with  an  "  All 
right,  then,  I'll  go  to  hell,"  he  tore  up  the  letter... 

One  of  Mark  Twain's  favourite  themes  for  the 
display  of  his  humour  was  the  subject  of  prevarica 
tion.  He  seemed  never  to  tire  of  ringing  the  changes 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    187 

upon  the  theme  of  the  lie,  its  utility,  its  convenience, 
and  its  consequences.  Doubtless  he  chose  to  dabble 
in  falsehood  because  it  is  generally  winked  at  as  the 
most  venial  of  all  moral  obliquities — a  fault  which 
is  the  most  thoroughly  universal  of  all  that  flesh 
is  heir  to.  The  incident  of  George  Washington 
and  the  cherry  tree  furnished  the  basis  for  countless 
of  his  anecdotes  ;  he  wrung  from  it  variations  in 
numerable,  from  the  epigram  to  the  anecdote.  His 
distinction  between  George  Washington  and  himself, 
redounding  immeasurably  to  his  own  glory,  and 
demonstrating  his  complete  superiority  to  Washington 
as  a  moral  character,  is  classic  :  "  George  Washington 
couldn't  tell  a  lie.  I  can  ;  but  I  won't."  Perhaps 
his  most  humorous  anecdote,  based  upon  the  same 
story,  is  in  connection  with  the  exceedingly  old 
"  darky  "  he  once  met  in  the  South,  who  claimed 
to  have  crossed  the  Delaware  with  Washington. 
"  Were  you  with  Washington,"  asked  Mark  Twain 
mischievously,  "  when  he  took  that  hack  at  the 
cherry  tree  ?  ''  This  was  a  poser  for  the  old  darkey  ; 
his  pride  was  appealed  to,  his  very  character  was  at 
stake.  After  an  awkward  hesitation,  the  old  darkey 
spoke  up,  a  gleam  of  simulated  recollection  (and  real 
gratification  for  his  convenient  memory)  overspread 
ing  his  countenance  :  "  Lord,  boss,  I  was  dar.  In 


188  MARK  TWAIN 

cose  I  was.     I  was  with  Marse  George  at  dat  very 
time.     In  fac — I  done  druv  dat  hack  myself  "  ! 

Mark  Twain's  most  delightful  trick  as  a  popular 
humorist  was  to  strike  out  some  comic  epigram, 
that  passed  currency  with  the  masses  whose  fancy 
it  tickled,  and  also  had  upon  it  the  minted  stamp 
of  the  classic  aphorism.  These  epigrams  were 
frequently  pseudo-moral  in  their  nature  ;  and  their 
humour  usually  lay  in  the  assumption  that  every 
body  is  habitually  addicted  to  prevarication — 
which  is  just  precisely  true  enough  and  reprehensible 
enough  to  validate  the  epigram.  His  method  was 
humorous  inversion ;  and  he  told  a  story  whose 
morals  are  so  ludicrously  twisted  that  the  right 
moral,  by  contrast,  spontaneously  springs  to  light. 
"  Never  tell  a  lie — except  for  practice,"  is  less 
successful  than  the  more  popularly  known  "  When 
in  doubt,  tell  the  truth."  Out  of  the  latter  maxim 
he  succeeded  in  extracting  a  further  essence  of 
humour.  He  admitted  inventing  the  maxim,  but 
never  expected  it  to  be  applied  to  himself.  His 
advice,  he  said,  was  intended  for  other  people ;  when 
he  was  in  doubt  himself,  he  used  more  sagacity ! 
Mark  Twain  has  made  no  more  delightful  epigram 
than  that  one  in  which  he  recognizes  that  a  lie, 
morally  reprehensible  as  it  may  be,  is  undoubtedly  an 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    189 

ever  present  help  in  time  of  need  :  "  Never  waste  a 
lie.  You  never  know  when  you  may  need  it." 

Sometimes  in  a  humorous,  sometimes  in  a  grimly 
serious  way,  Mark  Twain  was  fond  of  drawing  the 
distinction  between  theoretical  and  practical  morals. 
Theoretical  morals,  he  would  point  out,  are  the  sort 
you  get  on  your  mother's  knee,  in  good  books,  and 
from  the  pulpit.  You  get  them  into  your  head,  not 
into  your  heart.  Only  by  the  commission  of  crime 
can  anyone  acquire  real  morals.  Commit  all  the 
crimes  in  the  decalogue,  take  them  in  rotation,  per 
severe  in  this  stern  determination — and  after  awhile 
you  will  thereby  attain  to  moral  perfection !  It  is 
not  enough  to  commit  just  one  crime  or  two — though 
every  little  bit  helps.  Only  by  committing  them 
all  can  you  achieve  real  morality  !  It  is  interesting 
to  note  this  distinction  between  Mark  Twain,  the 
humorous  moralist,  and  Bernard  Shaw,  the  ethical 
thinker.  Each  teaches  precisely  the  same  thing — the 
one  not  even  half  seriously,  the  other  with  all  the 
sharp  sincerity  of  conviction.  Shaw  unhesitatingly 
declares  that  trying  to  be  wicked  is  precisely  the 
same  experiment  as  trying  to  be  good,  viz.,  the 
discovery  of  character. 

The  range  of  Mark  Twain's  humour,  from  the 
ludicrous  anecdote  with  comically  mixed  morals  to 


190  MARK  TWAIN 

the  profound  parable  with  grimly  ironic  conclusion, 
takes  the  measure  of  the  ethical  nature  of  the  man. 
It  can  best  be  illustrated,  I  think,  by  a  comparison 
of  his  anecdote  of  the  theft  of  the  green  water-melon 
and  the  classic  fable  of  The  Man  that  Corrupted 
Hadleyburg.  Mark  stole  a  water-melon  out  of  a 
farmer's  wagon,  while  he  wasn't  looking.  Of  course 
stole  was  too  harsh  a  term — he  withdrew,  he  retired 
that  water-melon.  After  getting  safely  away  to  a 
secluded  spot,  he  broke  the  water-melon  open — only 
to  find  that  it  was  green,  the  greenest  water-melon 
of  the  year. 

The  moment  he  saw  that  the  water-melon  was 
green,  he  felt  sorry.  He  began  to  reflect — for  re 
flection  is  the  beginning  of  reform.  It  is  only  by 
reflecting  on  some  crime  you  have  committed,  that 
you  are  "  vaccinated  "  against  committing  it  again. 

So  Mark  began  to  reflect.  And  his  reflections  were 
of  this  nature  :  What  ought  a  boy  to  do  who  has 
stolen  a  green  water-melon  ?  What  would  George 
Washington,  who  never  told  a  lie,  have  done  ?  He 
decided  that  the  only  real,  right  thing  for  any  boy 
to  do,  who  has  stolen  a  water-melon  of  that  class, 
is  to  make  restitution.  It  is  his  duty  to  restore  it 
to  its  rightful  owner.  So  rising  up,  spiritually 
strengthened  and  refreshed  by  his  noble  resolution, 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    191 

Mark  restored  the  water-melon — what  there  was  left 
of  it — to  the  farmer  and — made  the  farmer  give  him  a 
ripe  one  in  its  place  !  Thus  he  clinched  the  "  moral " 
of  this  story,  so  quaint  and  so  ingenious  ;  and  con 
cluded  that  only  in  some  such  way  as  this  could  one 
be  fortified  against  further  commission  of  crime. 
Only  thus  could  one  become  morally  perfect ! 

Here,  as  in  countless  other  places,  Mark  Twain 
throws  over  his  ethical  suggestion — a  suggestion,  by 
contrast,  of  the  very  converse  of  his  literal  words — 
the  veil  of  paradox  and  exaggeration,  of  incongruity, 
fantasy,  light  irony.  Yet  beneath  this  outer  covering 
of  art  there  is  a  serious  meaning  that,  like  murder, 
will  out.  If  demonstration  were  needed  that  Mark 
Twain  is  sealed  of  the  tribe  of  moralists,  that  is 
amply  supplied  by  that  masterpiece,  that  triumph 
of  invention,  construction,  and  originality, 
Man  that  Corrupted  Hadleyburg.  Here  is  a  pure 
morality,  daring  in  the  extreme  and  incredibly 
original  in  a  world  perpetually  reiterating  a  saying 
already  thousands  of  years  old,  to  the  effect  that 
there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun.  It  is  a  deliberate 
emendation  of  that  invocation  in  the  Lord's  Prayer : 
"  Lead  us  (not)  into  temptation."  The  shrieking 
irony  of  this  trenchant  parable,  its  cynicism  and 
heartlessness,  would  make  of  it  an  unendurable 


192  MARK  TWAIN 

(Criticism  of  human  life — were  it  accepted  literally 
as  a  representation  of  society.  In  essence  it  is  a 
morality  pure  and  simple,  animated  not  only  by  its 
brilliantly  original  ethical  suggestion,  but  also  by  its 
illuminating  reflection  of  human  nature  and  its 
graciously  relieving  humour.  In  that  exultant  letter 
which  the  Diabolus  ex  machina  wrote  to  the  betrayed 
villagers,  he  sneers  at  their  old  and  lofty  reputation 
for  honesty — that  reputation  of  which  they  were 
so  inordinately  proud  and  vain.  The  weak  point  in 
their  armour  was  disclosed  so  soon  as  he  discovered 
how  carefully  and  vigilantly  they  kept  themselves  and 
their  children  out  of  temptation.  For  he  well  knew 
that  the  weakest  of  all  weak  things  is  a  virtue  that  has 
not  been  tested  in  the  fire.  The  familiar  distinction 
between  innocence  and  virtue  springs  to  mind. 
And  it  is  worthy  of  consideration  that  Nietzsche, 
and  Shaw  after  him,  both  point  out  that  virtue 
consists,  not  in  resisting  evil,  but  in  not  desiring  it ! 
The  Man  thai  Corrupted  Hadleyburg  is  a  masterpiece, 
\J  eminently  worthy  of  the  genius  of  a  Swift.  It  gro- 
claims  Mark  Twain  not  only  as  a  supreme  axtist, 
but  also  as  eminently  and  distinctively  a  moralist. 

It  is  impossible  to  think  of  Mark  Twain  in  his 
maturer  development  as  other  than  a  moralist.  My 
personal  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Clemens  convinced 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    193 

me — had  I  needed  to  be  convinced — that  in  his 
later  years  he  had  striven  to  grapple  nobly  with 
many  of  the  deeper  issues  of  life,  character  and 
morality,  public,  religious  and  social,  as  well  as 
personal  and  private.  I  never  knew  anyone  who 
thought  so  "  straight,"  or  who  expressed  himself 
with  such  simple  directness  upon  questions  affecting 
religion  and  conduct.  He  was  absolutely  fearless  in 
his  condemnation  of  those  subsidized  "  ministers  " 
of  the  Gospel  in  cosmopolitan  centres,  who,  through 
self-interest,  cut  their  moral  disquisitions  to  fit 
the  predilections  of  their  wealthy  parishioners,  many 
of  whom  were  under  national  condemnation  as 
"  malefactors  of  great  wealth."  Animated  by  love 
for  all  creatures,  the  defenceless  wild  animal  as  well 
as  the  domestic  pet,  he  was  unsparing  in  his  indict 
ment  of  those  big-game  hunters  who  shamelessly 
described  their  feelings  of  savage  exultation  when 
some  poor  animal  served  as  the  target  for  their  skill, 
and  staggered  off  wounded  unto  death.  His  sympathy 
for  the  natives  of  the  Congo  was  profound  and 
intense ;  and  his  philippic  against  King  Leopold 
for  the  atrocities  he  sanctioned  called  the  attention 
of  the  whole  world  to  conditions  that  constituted 
a  disgrace  to  modern  civilization.  His  diatribe 
against  the  Czar  of  Russia  for  his  inhumanity  to  the 

N 


194  MARK  TWAIN 

serfs  was  an  equally  convincing  proof  of  his  noble 
determination  to  throw  the  whole  weight  of  his  in 
fluence  in  behalf  of  suffering  and  oppressed  humanity. 
Some  years  before  his  death,  he  told  me  that  he 
never  intended  to  speak  in  public  again  save  in 
behalf  of  movements,  humanitarian  and  uplifting, 
which  gave  promise  of  effecting  civic  betterment 
and  social  improvement. 

I  have  always  felt  a  peculiar  and  personal  debt 
of  gratitude  to  Mark  Twain  for  three  events — for 
the  publication  of  such  works  can  be  dignified 
with  no  less  eminent  characterization.  When  Mr. 
Edward  Dowden  tried  to  make  out  the  best  case 
for  Shelley  that  he  could,  it  was  at  the  sacrifice  of  the 
reputation  of  the  defenceless  Harriet  Westbrook. 
That  ingrained  chivalry  which  is  the  defining  char 
acteristic  of  the  Southerner,  the  sympathy  for  the 
oppressed,  the  compassion  for  the  weak  and  the 
defenceless,  animated  Mark  Twain  to  one  of  the 
noblest  actions  of  his  career.  For  his  defence  of 
Harriet  Westbrook  is  something  more  than  a  work, 
it  is  an  act — an  act  of  high  courage  and  nobility. 
With  words  icily  cold  in  their  logic,  Mark  Twain 
tabulated  the  six  pitifully  insignificant  charges 
against  Harriet,  such  as  her  love  for  dress  and  her 
waning  interest  in  Latin  lessons,  and  set  over  against 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    195 

them  the  six  times  repeated  name  of  Cornelia  Turner, 
that  fascinating  young  married  woman  who  read 
Petrarch  with  Shelley  and  sat  up  all  hours  of  the 
night  with  him — because  he  saw  visions  when  he 
was  alone  !  Again,  in  his  Joan  of  Arc,  Mark  Twain 
erected  a  monument  of  enduring  beauty  to  that 
simple  maid  of  Orleans,  to  whom  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  has  just  now  paid  the  merited  yet  tardy 
tribute  of  canonization.  It  is  a  sad  commentary 
upon  the  popular  attitude  of  frivolity  towards  the 
professional  humorist  that  Mark  Twain  felt  com 
pelled  to  publish  this  book  anonymously,  in  order 
that  the  truth  and  beauty  of  that  magic  story  might  \ 
receive  its  just  meed  of  respectful  and  sympathetic 
attention. 

The  third  act  for  which  I  have  always  felt  deeply 
grateful  to  Mark  Twain  is  the  apparently  little  known, 
yet  beautiful  and  significant  story  entitled  Was  it 
Heaven  or  Hell  ?  It  contains,  I  believe,  the  moral 
that  had  most  meaning  for  Mark  Twain  throughout 
his  entire  life — the  bankruptcy  of  rigidly  formal 
Puritanism  in  the  face  of  erring  human  nature,  the 
tragic  result  of  heedlessly  holding  to  the  letter, 
instead  of  wisely  conforming  to  the  spirit,  of 
moral  law.  No  one  doubts  that  Mark  Twain — as 
who  would  not  ? — believed,  aye,  knew,  that  this 


196  MARK  TWAIN 

sweet,  human  child  went  to  a  heaven  of  forgiveness 
and  mercy,  not  to  a  hell  of  fire  and  brimstone,  for 
her  innocently  trivial  transgression.  The  essay 
on  Harriet  Shelley,  the  novel  of  Joan  of  Arc,  and 
the  story  Was  it  Heaven  or  Hell  ?  are  all,  as  decisively 
as  the  philippic  against  King  Leopold,  the  diatribe 
against  the  Czar  of  Russia,  essential  vindications 
of  the  moral  principle.  Was  it  Heaven  or  Hell  ? 
in  its  simple  pathos,  The  Man  that  Corrupted  Hadley- 
burg  in  its  morally  salutary  irony,  present  vital 
evidence  of  that  same  transvaluation  of  current 
moral  values  which  marks  the  age  of  Nietzsche  and 
Ibsen,  of  Tolstoy  and  Shaw.  In  that  amusing, 
naive  biography  of  her  father,  little  Susy  admits  that 
he  could  make  exceedingly  bright  jokes  and  could 
be  extremely  amusing ;  but  she  maintains  that  he 
was  more  interested  in  earnest  books  and  earnest 
conversation  than  in  humorous  ones.  She  pro 
nounced  him  to  be  as  much  of  a  Pholosopher  (sic) 
as  anything.  And  she  hazards  the  opinion  that  he 
might  have  done  a  great  deal  in  this  direction  if  only 
he  had  studied  when  he  was  a  boy  ! 

Years  ago,  Mark  Twain  wrote  a  book  which  he 
called  An  Extract  from  Captain  Stormfield's  Visit  to 
Heaven.  For  long  he  desisted  from  publishing  it 
because  of  his  fear  that  its  outspoken  frankness 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    197 

would  appear  irreverent  and  shock  the  sensibilities 
of  the  public.  While  his  villa  of  "  Stormfield  "  was 
in  course  of  erection  several  years  ago,  he  discovered 
that  half  of  it  was  going  to  cost  what  he  had  expected 
to  pay  for  the  whole  house.  His  heart  was  set  on 
having  a  loggia  or  sun-parlour  ;  and  when  it  seemed 
that  he  would  have  to  sacrifice  this  apple  of  his  eye 
through  lack  of  funds,  he  threw  discretion  to  the  winds, 
hauled  out  Captain  Stormfield  and  made  the  old  tar 
pay  the  piper.  His  fears  as  to  its  reception  were  wholly 
unwarranted ;  for  it  was  generously  enjoyed  for  its 
shrewd  and  vastly  suggestive  ideas  on  religion  and 
heaven  as  popularly  taught  nowadays  from  the  pulpits. 
This  book  is  full  of  a  keen  and  bluff  common  sense, 
cannily  expressed  in  the  words  of  an  old  sea-captain 
whom  Mark  Twain  had  known  intimately.  It  is 
only  another  link  in  the  chain  of  evidence  which  goes 
to  prove  that  Mark  Twain  had  thought  long  and 
deeply  upon  the  problematical  nature  of  a  future  life. 
It  is,  in  essence,  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  those 
professors  of  religion  who  still  preach  a  heaven  of 
golden  streets  and  pearly  gates,  of  idleness  and  ever 
lasting  psalm-singing,  of  restful  and  innocuous  bliss. 
Mark  Twain  wanted  to  point  out  the  absurdity  of 
taking  the  allegories  and  the  figurative  language  of 
the  Bible  literally.  Of  course  everybody  called  for 


198  MARK  TWAIN 

a  harp  and  a  halo  as  soon  as  they  reached  heaven. 
They  were  given  the  harps  and  halos — indeed  nothing 
harmless  and  reasonable  was  refused  them.  But 
they  found  these  things  the  merest  accessories. 
Mark  Twain's  heaven  was  just  the  busiest  place 
imaginable.  There  weren't  any  idle  people  there 
after  the  first  day.  The  old  sea  captain  pointed  out 
that  singing  hymns  and  waving  palm  branches  through 
all  eternity  was  all  very  pretty  when  you  heard 
about  it  from  the  pulpit,  but  that  it  was  a  mighty 
poor  way  to  put  in  valuable  time.  He  took  no  stock 
in  a  heaven  of  warbling  ignoramuses.  He  found  that 
Eternal  Rest,  reduced  to  hard  pan,  was  not  as  com 
forting  as  it  sounds  in  the  pulpit.  Heaven  is  the 
merited  reward  of  service  ;  and  the  opportunities 
for  service  were  infinite.  As  he  said,  you've  got  to 
earn  a  thing  square  and  honest  before  you  can  enjoy 
it.  To  Mark,  this  was  "  about  the  sensiblest  heaven  " 
he  had  ever  heard  of.  He  mourned  a  little  over  the 
discovery  that  what  a  man  mostly  missed  in  heaven 
was  company.  But  he  rejoiced  in  the  information 
vouchsafed  by  his  friend  the  Captain — a  valuable 
piece  of  information  that  leaves  him,  and  all  who  are 
so  fortunate  as  to  hear  it,  the  better  for  the  know 
ledge — that  happiness  isn't  a  thing  in  itself,  but  only 
a  contrast  with  something  that  isn't  pleasant !  This 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    199 

view  of  heaven,  seen  through  the  temperament  of  a 
humorist  and  a  philosopher,  is  provocative  and 
thought- compelling  more  than  it  is  amusing  or 
ludicrous.  I  think  it  inspired  Bernard  Shaw's 
Aerial  Foot-ball  which  won  Collier's  thousand  dollar 
prize — a  prize  which  Mr  Shaw  hurled  back  with 
indignation  and  scorn ! 

Mark  Twain  was  a  great  humorist — more  genial 
than  grim,  more  good-humoured  than  ironic,  more 
given  to  imaginative  exaggeration  than  to  intel 
lectual  sophistication,  more  inclined  to  pathos  than 
to  melancholy.  He  was  a  great  story-teller  and 
fabulist ;  and  he  has  enriched  the  literature  of  the 
world  with  a  gallery  of  portraits  so  human  in  their 
likenesses  as  to  rank  them  with  the  great  figures  of 
classic  comedy  and  picaresque  romance.  He  was 
a  remarkable  observer  and  faithful  reporter,  never 
allowing  himself,  in  Ibsen's  phrase,  to  be  "  frightened 
by  the  venerableness  of  the  institution " ;  and  his 
sublimated  journalism  reveals  a  mastery  of  the 
naively  comic  thoroughly  human  and  democratic. 
He  is  the  most  eminent  product  of  our  American 
democracy,  and,  in  profoundly  shocking  Great 
Britain  by  preferring  Connecticut  to  Camelot,  he 
exhibited  that  robustness  of  outlook,  that  buoyancy 
of  spirit,  and  that  faith  in  the  contemporary  which 


200  MARK  TWAIN 

stamps  America  in  perennial  and  inexhaustible 
youth.  Throughout  his  long  life,  he  has  been  a  factor 
of  high  ethical  influence  in  our  civilization,  and  the 
philosopher  and  the  humanitarian  look  out  through 
the  twinkling  eyes  of  the  humorist. 

And  yet,  after  all,  Mark  Twain's  supreme  title  to 
distinction  as  a  great  writer  inheres  in  his  natural, 
if  not  wholly  conscious,  mastery  in  that  highest 
sphere  of  thought,  embracing  religion,  philosophy, 
morality  and  even  humour,  which  we  call  sociology. 
When  I  first  advanced  this  view,  it  was  taken  up 
on  all  sides.  Here,  we  were  told,  was  Mark  Twain 
"  from  a  new  angle  "  ;  the  essay  was  reviewed  at 
length  on  the  continent  of  Europe  ;  and  the  author 
of  the  essay  was  invited  "to  explain  Mark  Twain 
to  the  German  public " !  There  are  still  many 
people,  however,  who  resent  any  demonstration 
that  Mark  Twain  was  anything  more  than  a 
mirthful  and  humorous  entertainer.  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw  once  remarked  to  me,  in  support  of  the  view 
here  outlined,  that  he  regarded  Poe  and  Mark  Twain 
as  America's  greatest  achievements  in  literature, 
and  that  he  thought  of  Mark  Twain  primarily,  not 
as  humorist,  but  as  sociologist.  "  Of  course,"  he 
added,  "  Mark  Twain  is  in  much  the  same  position 
as  myself  :  he  has  to  put  matters  in  such  a  way  as  to 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST 

make  people  who  would  otherwise  hang  him,  believe 
he  is  joking." 

Mark  Twain  once  said  that  whenever  he  had 
diverged  from  custom  and  principle  to  utter  a  truth, 
the  rule  had  been  that  the  hearer  hadn't  strength 
of  mind  enough  to  believe  it.  "  Custom  is  a  petri 
faction,"  he  asserted;  "nothing  but  dynamite  can 
dislodge  it  for  a  century."  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells  has 
advanced  the  somewhat  fanciful  theory  that  "  the 
ludicrous  incongruity  of  a  slave-holding  democracy 
nurtured  upon  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and 
the  comical  spectacle  of  white  labour  owning  black 
labour,  had  something  to  do  in  quickening  (in  Mark 
Twain)  the  sense  of  contrast  which  is  the  mountain  of 
humour  or  is  said  to  be  so."  However  that  may  be, 
Mark  Twain  was  irresistibly  driven  to  the  conclusion, 
Southern  born  though  he  was,  that  slavery  was 
unjust,  inhuman,  and  indefensible.  The  advanced 
thinkers  in  the  South  had  reached  this  conclusion 
long  before  the  beginning  of  the  Civil  War,  and 
many  Southern  men  had  actually  devised  freedom 
to  their  slaves  in  their  wills.  The  slaves  were  treated 
humanely,  their  material  wants  were  cared  for  by 
their  owners  with  a  care  that  can  only  be  called 
loving,  and  their  spiritual  welfare  was  the  frequent 
concern  in  particular  of  the  mistress  of  the  house. 


202  MARK  TWAIN 

In  his  schoolboy  days,  Mark  Twain  had  no  aversion 
to  slavery.  He  wasn't  even  aware  that  there  was 
anything  wrong  about  it.  He  never  heard  it  con 
demned  by  acquaintances  or  in  the  local  papers. 
And  as  for  the  preachers,  they  taught  that  God 
approved  slavery,  and  cited  Biblical  passages  in 
support  of  that  view.  If  the  slaves  themselves  were 
averse  to  it,  at  least  they  kept  discreetly  silent  on 
the  subject.  He  seldom  saw  a  slave  misused — on 
the  farm,  never.  But  when  he  was  brought  face 
to  face  with  Sandy,  the  little  slave  forcibly  separated 
from  his  family^  itjnade  a  deep  impression  upon  his 
consciousness.  It  was  this  deplorable  evil  of  the 
system,  this  unnatural  and  inhuman  forcible  separa 
tion  of  the  members  of  the  same  family,  the  one 
from  the  other,  that  convinced  him  of  the  injustice 
of  slavery ;  though  this  vision,  as  has  been  pointed 
out  by  Mr.  Ho  wells,  did  not  come  to  him  "  till  after 
his  liberation  from  neighbourhood  in  the  vaster  far 
West."  Yet  it  found  its  wa^  into  his  books— into 
Huckleberry  Finn,  with  its  recital  of  Jim's  pathetic 
longing  to  buy  back  his  wife  and  children;  and. 
in  Pudd'nhead  Wilson  with  its  moving  picture  of 
the  poor  slave's  agony  when  she  suddenly  realizes 
in  the  way  the  water  is  flowing  around  the  snag 
that  she  is  being  "  sold  down  the  river."  In 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    203 

Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  as  Professor  Phelps  has  pointed 
out,  "  the  red-hot  indignation  of  the  author  largely 
nullified  her  evident  desire  to  tell  the  truth.  .  .  . 
Mrs.  Stowe's  astonishing  work  is  not  really  the 
history  of  slavery ;  it  is  the  history  of  abolition 
sentiment.  .  .  .  Mark  Twain  shows  us  the  beautiful 
side  of  slavery — for  it  had  a  wonderfully  beautiful, 
patriarchal  side — and  he  also  shows  us  the  horror  of 
it."  Mark  Twain  has  declared  that  the  only  way 
to  write  a  great  novel  is  to  learn  the  scenes  and 
people  with  which  the  story  is  concerned,  through 
years  of  "  unconscious  absorption "  of  the  facts 
of  the  life  to  be  portrayed.  When  his  stories  were 
written,  slavery  was  a  thing  of  the  past — he  was 
competent  to  judge  of  the  situation  impartially, 
through  direct  personal  contact  throughout  his 
boyhood  with  the  realities  of  slavery.  His  object 
was  not  the  object  of  the  reformer,  warped  with 
prejudice  and  fired  by  animosity.  He  saw  clearly ; 
for  his  aim  was  not  polemic,  but  artistic.  Hence 
it  is,  I  believe,  that  Mark  Twain  stands  out  as, 
in  essence  and  in  fundamentals,  a  remarkable 
sociologist.  Certain  passages  in  his  books  on 
the  subject  of  slavery,  as  the  historian  Lecky 
has  declared,  are  the  truest  things  that  have  ever 
been  expressed  on  the  subject  which  vexed  a  con- 


204  MARK  TWAIN 

tinent  and  plunged  a  nation  in  bloody,  fratricidal 
strife. 

Huckleberry  Finn  and  Life  on  the  Mississippi 
always  call  up  to  my  mind  the  most  vivid  pictures 
— pictures  that  are  eternally  unforgettable.  The 
memorable  scene  in  which  Colonel  Sherburne  quells 
the  mob  and  his  scathing  remarks  upon  lynching ; 
the  reality  and  the  pathos  of  the  feuds  of  those 
Kentucky  families,  the  Shepherdsons  and  the 
Grangerfords,  shooting  each  other  down  at  sight 
in  vindication  of  honour  and  pride  of  race  ;  the- 
lordly  life  of  the  pilot  on  the  Mississippi,  his  violent 
and  unchallenged  sway  over  his  subordinates,  his 
mastery  of  the  river ;  the  variegated  colours  of  that 
lawless,  picturesque,  semi-barbarous  life  of  the 
river — all  these  sweep  by  us  in  a  series  of  panoramic 
pictures  as  Huck's  raft  swings  lazily  down  the 
tawny  river,  and  Horace  Bixby  guides  his  boat 
through  the  dangers  of  the  channel.  Mark  Twain 
is  primarily  a  great  artist,  only  unconsciously  a 
true  sociologist.  But  his  power  as  a  sociologist 
is  no  less  real  that  it  is  unconscious,  indeed  infinitely 
more  real  and  human  and  verisimilar  that  it  is  not 
polemical.  There  is  a  "  sort  of  contemporaneous 
posterity "  which  has  registered  its  verdict  that 
Mark  Twain  was  the  greatest  humorist  of  the  present 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    205 

era.  But  there  is  yet  to  come  that  greater  posterity 
of  the  future  which  will,  I  dare  say,  class  Mark  Twain 
as  America's  greatest,  most  human  sociologist  in 
letters.  He  is  the  historian,  the  historian  in  art, 
of  a  varied  and  unique  phase  of  civilization  on  the 
American  continent  that  has  passed  forever.  And 
it  is  inconceivable  that  any  future  investigator 
into  the  sociological  phases  of  that  civilization  can 
fail  to  find  priceless  and  unparalleled  documents  in 
the  wild  yet  genial,  rudimentary  yet  sane,  boisterous 
yet  universally  human  writings  of  Mark  Twain. 

Mark  Twain's  genius  of  social  comprehension  and 
sociologic  interpretation  went  even  deeper  than 
this.  His  mastery  lay  not  alone  in  penetrative  re 
flection  of  a  bit  of  sectional  life  and  a  vanished  phase 
of  our  civilization,  not  alone  in  astute  criticism  of  an 
"  institution  "  blotted  from  the  American  escutcheon 
and  a  collective  racial  passion  that  periodically  breaks 
forth  from  time  to  time  in  mad  "  carnivals  of  crime." 
The  defining  quality  of  the  true  sociologist,  that 
quality  which  gives  his  profession  its  power  and 
validity  as  an  effective  instrumentality  in  the  ad 
vancement  of  civilization,  is  the  faculty  of  penetrating 
national  and  racial  disguises,  and  going  directly  to 
the  heart  of  the  human  problem.  Mark  Twain 
possessed  this  faculty  in  supreme  degree.  As  a 


206  MARK  TWAIN 

literary  critic  he  was  banal  and  futile  ;  but  as  a  social 
and  racial  critic  he  was  remarkable  and  profound. 
His  essay  Concerning  the  Jews  is  a  masterpiece  of 
impartial  interpretation ;  his  comprehension  of 
French  and  German  racial  traits,  as  revealed  in  his 
works,  is  keen  and  pervasively  pertinent ;  and  his 
magnificent  analysis  of  the  situation  in  South  Africa, 
in  the  concluding  chapters  of  Following  the  Equator, 
rings  clear  with  the  accents  of  truth  and  mounts 
almost  to  the  dignity  of  public  prophecy.  Deeper 
far,  more  comprehensive,  and  voiced  with  splendid 
courage,  are  Mark  Twain's  interpretations  of  American 
democracy  and  his  mirroring  of  the  national  ideals. 
His  "  defence  "  of  General  Funston  is  a  scorching  and 
devastating  blast,  red  with  the  fires  of  patriotism. 
Whatever  be  one's  convictions,  one  cannot  but 
respect  the  profound  sincerity  of  Mark  Twain's 
berserker-like  rage  over  the  attitude  of  Europe  in 
China,  the  barbarities  of  Russian  autocracy,  and  the 
horrors  of  America's  methods  in  the  Philippines, 
copied  after  Weyler's  reconcentrado  policy  in  Cuba. 
His  study  of  Christian  Science,  despite  its  hyperbole, 
its  gross  exaggerations  and  unfulfilled  prophecies,  is 
the  expression  of  glorified  common-sense,  a  socio 
logical  study  of  religious  fanaticism  comprehensive  in 
psychological  analysis  of  national  and  racial  traits. 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    207 

In  his  own  works,  Mark  Twain  brought  to  realiza 
tion  the  dim  and  inchoate  fancies  of  Whitman  ;  in  his 
own  person  he  realized  that  "  divine  average "  of 
common  life  which  is  the  dream  of  American  democ 
racy.  The  Prince  and  the  Pauper  is  a  beautiful 
child's  tale,  vivid  in  narrative  and  rich  in  human 
interest.  It  is  something  deeper  far  than  this  ;  for 
the  very  crucial  motive  of  the  story,  the  successful 
substitution  of  the  commoner  for  the  king,  transforms 
it  into  a  symbolic  legend  of  democracy  and  the 
equality  of  man.  Mark  Twain  vehemently  approved 
the  French  revolution,  and  frankly  expressed  his 
regret  over  Napoleon's  failure  to  invade  England  and 
thus  destroy  the  last  vestiges  of  the  semi-feudal 
paraphernalia  of  the  British,  monarchy.  Despite  its 
note  of  Yankee  blatancy,  A  Yankee  at  the  Court  of 
King  Arthur  is  a  rem?  rkable  brief  for  democracy  and 
the  brotherhood  of  -  nan.  So  eminent  a  publicist  as 
Mr.  William  T.  Stead  pronounced  it,  at  the  time  of  its 
first  appearance,  one  of  the  most  significant  books  of 
our  time ;  and  classed  it  (with  Henry  George's  Progress 
and  Poverty  and  Edward  Bellamy's  Looking  Backward) 
as  the  th\rd  great  book  from  America  to  give  tre 
mendous  impetus  to  the  social  democratic  movement 
of  the  age.  Mark  Twain  abandoned  all  hope  of  a 
future  Kf e  ;  found  more  of  sorrow  than  of  joy 


208  MARK  TWAIN 

life's  balances  ;  and  even,  in  his  latter  years,  lost  faith 
in  humanity  itself.  But  amid  the  wreck  of  faiths  and 
creeds,  he  achieved  the  strange  paradox  of  American 
optimism  :  he  never  lost  faith  in  democracy,  and 
fought  valiantly  to  the  end  in  behalf  of  equality  and 
the  welfare  of  the  average  man. 

Several  years  ago,  when  we  were  crossing  the 
Atlantic  on  the  same  ship,  Mr.  Clemens  told  me  that 
while  he  was  living  in  Hartford  in  the  early  eighties,,. 
I  think,  he  wrote  a  paper  to  be  read  at  the  fort- 
nigh  dly  club  to  which  he  belonged.  This  club  was 
composed"  Chiefly  of  men  whose  deepest  interests 
were  concerned1  with  the  theological  and  the  religi 
ously  orthodox.  Ume  of  his  friends,  to  whom  he 
read  this  paper  in  ad\.ance,  solemnly  warned  him 
not  to  read  it  before  the  cluJh.  For  he  felt  confident 
that  a  philosophical  essay,  expressing  candid  doubt 
as  to  the  existence  of  free  will,  an  d  declaring  without 
hesitation  that  every  man  was  unde.r  the  immitigable 
compulsion  of  his  temperament,  his  training,  and 
his  environment,  would  appear  unspeakably  shock 
ing,  heretical  and  blasphemous  to  tht^  orthodox 
members  of  that  club.  "  I  did  not  read  tk^t  paper," 
Mr.  Clemens  said  to  me,  "  but  I  put  it  away,  resolved 
to  let  it  stand  the  corrosive  test  of  time.  Ev^ry  now 
and  then,  when  it  occurred  to  me,  I  used  to  take 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST    209 

that  paper  out  and  read  it,  to  compare  its  views 
with  my  own  later  views.  From  time  to  time  I 
added  something  to  it.  But  I  never  found,  during 
that  quarter  of  a  century,  that  my  views  had  altered 
in  the  slightest  degree.  I  had  a  few  copies  published 
not  long  ago  ;  but  there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence 
in  the  book  to  indicate  its  authorship."  A  few 
days  later  he  gave  me  a  copy,  and  when  I  read  that 
book,  I  found  these  words,  among  others,  in  the 
prefatory  note  : 

"  Every  thought  in  them  (these  papers)  has  been 
thought  (and  accepted  as  unassailable  truth)  by 
millions  upon  millions  of  men  —  and  concealed, 
kept  private.  Why  did  they  not  speak  out  ?  Be 
cause  they  dreaded  (and  could  not  bear)  the  dis 
approval  of  the  people  around  them.  Why  have 
I  not  published  ?  The  same  reason  has  restrained 
me,  I  think.  I  can  find  no  other." 

What  is  Man  ?  propounds  at  length,  through  the 
medium  of  a  dialogue  between  a  Young  Man  and  an 
Old  Man,  the  doctrine  that  "  Beliefs  are  acquire 
ments  ;  temperaments  are  born.  Beliefs  are  subject 
to  change ;  nothing  whatever  can  change  tempera 
ment."  He  enunciates  the  theory,  which  seems 
to  me  both  brilliant  and  original,  that  there  can  be 
no  such  person  as  a  permanent  seeker  after  truth, 
o 


MARK  TWAIN 


"  When  he  found  the  truth  he  sought  no  farther ; 
but  from  that  day  forth,  with  his  soldering  iron  in 
one  hand  and  his  bludgeon  in  the  other,  he  tinkered  its 
leaks  and  reasoned  with  objectors."  "  All  training," 
he  avers,  "  is  one  form  or  another  of  outside  influences, 
and  association  is  the  largest  part  of  it.  Aman  is 
never  anything  but  what  his  outside  influences 
have  made  him.  They  train  him  downward  or  they 
train  him  upward — but  they  train  him;  they* are 
at  work  upon  him  all  the  time."  Once  asked  by 
Rudyard  Kipling  whether  he  was  ever  going  to 
write  another  story  about  Tom  Sawyer,  Mark  Twain 
replied  that  he  had  a  notion  of  writing  the  sequel 
to  Tom  Sawyer  in  two  parts,  in  one  bringing  him 
to  high  honour,  and  in  the  other  bringing  him  to 
the  gallows.  When  Kipling  protested  vigorously 
against  any  theory  of  the  sort,  because  Tom  Sawyer 
was  real,  Mark  Twain  replied  with  the  fatalistic 
doctrine  of  What  is  Man  ?  :  "  Oh,  he  is  real.  He's 
all  the  boy  that  I  have  known  or  recollect ;  but 
that  would  be  a  good  way  of  ending  the  book — 
because,  when  you  come  to  think  of  it,  neither  religion, 
training,  nor  education  avails  anything  against  the 
force  of  circumstances  that  drive  a  man.  Suppose 
we  took  the  next  four  and  twenty  years  of  Tom 
Sawyer's  life,  and  gave  a  little  joggle  to  the 


PHILOSOPHER,  MORALIST,  SOCIOLOGIST 

circumstances  that  controlled  him.  He  would, 
logically  and  according  to  the  joggle,  turn  out  a 
rip  or  an  angel."  It  was  what  he  called  Kismet. 
It  is  one  of  the  tragedies  of  his  life,  so  sad  in  many 
ways,  that  in  the  days  when  the  blows  of  fate  fell 
heaviest  upon  his  head,  he  had  lost  all  faith  in  the 
Christian  ideals,  all  belief  in  immortality  or  a  personal 
God.  And  yet  he  avowed  that,  no  matter  what 
form  of  religion  or  theology,  atheism  or  agnosticism, 
the  individual  or  the  nation  embraced,  the  human 
race  remained  "  indestructibly  content,  happy; — j  ^^ 

thankful,  proud."  He^jie3D£i^imd^ft-4mge"^-pessi- .-»  Ijf 
mism  in  his  make-up,  his  beliefs  never  tended  to 
warp  his  nature,  he  accepted  his  fatalism  gladly 
because  he  saw  in  it  supreme  truth.  His  ultimate 
philosophy  of  lif  e,  which  he  sums  up  in  What  is  Man  ?, 
is  healthy  and  right-minded.  It  is  best  embodied 
hi  the  lofty  injunction :  "  Diligently  train  your 
ideals  upward  and  still  upward  towards  a  summit 
where  you  will  find  your  chiefest  pleasure  in  conduct 
which,  while  contenting  you,  will  be  sure  to  confer 
benefits  upon  your  neighbour  and  the  community." 
Lassalle  once  said :  "  History  forgives  mistakes 
and  failures,  but  not  want  of  conviction."  In 
Mark  Twain,  posterity  will  never  be  called  upon  to 
forgive  any  want  of  conviction. 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 

A  BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  BOOKS,  ESSAYS,  AND  ARTICLES 
DEALING  WITH  MARK  TWAIN  (SAMUEL  LANGHORNE 
CLEMENS) 

1869  (SEPTEMBER)— 1910  (SEPTEMBER) 

1869.  Eeviews  of  The  Innocents  Abroad.     "  Nation "   (N.Y.), 

September  2  ;   "  Atlantic  Monthly,"  December. 

1870.  Keviews    of    The    Innocents    Abroad.    By    Bret    Harte 

in  "  Overland  Monthly,"  January ;  "  Saturday 
Keview,"  October  8. 

Introduction  to  The  Innocents  Abroad  (English  edition, 
J.  C.  Hotten  :  London).     By  E.  P.  Hingston. 

1872.  Les    Humoristes    Amtricaines.    Mark    Twain.     By    Th. 

Bentzon  (Mme.  Blanc).     "  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes," 
July  15. 
Mark  Twain.     "  Once  a  Week,"  December  14. 

1873.  Introduction  to  the  Choice  Humorous   Works  of  Mark 

Twain  (J.  C.  Hotten  :  London).     By  "  J.  C.  H." 

1874.  Review  of  The  Gilded  Age.     "  Old  and  New,"  March. 
Mark  Twain.    By  G.  T.  Ferris.     "  Appleton's  Magazine," 

July. 

1875.  L'Age   Dort   en   Amdrique.     Constituting    an    elaborate 

review,  with  appreciation  and  lengthy  extracts,  of 
The  Gilded  Age  (London,  1874).  By  Th.  Bentzon 
(Mme.  Blanc).  "Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,"  March  15. 

215 


216  MARK  TWAIN 

1879.  Mark  Twain  at  Hartford.     In   Celebrities  at  Home,  by 

Edmund  Yates.  Reprinted  from  "The  World" 
(London).  Third  Series. 

1880.  Keview  of  A  Tramp  Abroad.     "  Athenaeum,"  April  24. 

1881.  Eeview    of    The    Prince    and    the    Pauper.      "Critic," 

December  31. 

1882.  Mark  Twain.     "  Critic,"  June  17. 

Keview  of  The  Stolen  White  Elephant.  "Nation" 
(N.Y.),  August  10. 

Mark  Twain.  By  W.  D.  Howells.  "Century,"  Sep 
tember. 

Mark  Twain.  In  American  Humorists,  by  H.  R.  Haweis. 
(Funk  and  Wagnalls  :  New  York.) 

1883.  Reviews    of    Life    on    the    Mississippi.    "  Athenaeum," 

June  2 ;  by  R.  Brown  in  "  The  Academy,"  July 
28  ;  "  Congregationalist,"  August ;  "  Nation  "  (N.Y.), 
August  30  ;  "  Atlantic  Monthly,"  September. 

1884.  Mark  Twain  and  the  First  of  April.     "  Critic,"  April  5. 
Mark  Twain  in  Bronze.     "  Critic,"  October  18. 

1885.  Mark  Twain  at  "  Nook  Farm  "  (Hartford]  and  Elmira. 

By  C.  H.  Clark.     "  Critic,"  January  17. 
To   Mark   Twain   on   his   Fiftieth   Birthday.     Poem   by 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.     "  Critic,"  November  28. 
The  Boyhood  of  Mark  Twain.     "  Critic,"  December  12. 

1886.  Les   Caravanes   d'un  humoriste.    Constituting   a   critical 

sketch  of,  and  long  citations  from,  Life  on  the 
Mississippi  ( Jas.  R.  Osgood  and  Co. :  Boston,  1885). 
By  Eugene  Forgues.  "  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes," 
February  15. 

1887.  Mark  Twain.     In  Famous  American  Authors,  by  Sarah 

K.  Bolton.     (Thos.  Y.  Crowell  and  Co. :   New  York.) 


APPENDIX  217 

1888.  Mark  Twain.  By  C.  H.  Clark.  In  Authors  at  Home, 
edited  by  J.  L.  andJT.  B.  Gilder.  (Cassell  Publishing 
Co.  :  New  York.)  Same  article  in  "  Critic,"  January 
17,  1885. 

1890.  Review  of  A  Connecticut   Yankee  at  the  Court  of  King 

Arthur.    In   Editor's   Study.     "Harper's  Magazine," 

January. 
Sketch  of  A  Yankee  in  King  Arthur's  Court.     "  Review 

of  Reviews  "  (London),  February. 
Review  of  A  Yankee  in  King  Arthur's  Court.     "Critic," 

February  22. 
The    Way  Mark   Twain  impressed  England.     "  Critic," 

November  29. 
Introduction   to   The  Adventures   of   Tom  Sawyer.     By 

G.  Krieger.     (G.  Freytag  :   Leipzig.) 

1891.  Andrew  Lang's  Tribute  to  Mark  Twain.  From  "  Illustrated 

News  of  the  World."     "  Critic,"  March  7. 
The  Art  of  Mark  Twain.    From  "  Illustrated  News  of 
the  World."     By  Andrew  Lang.     "  Critic,"  July  25. 

1892.  Mark  Twain.    His  Life  and  Work.    By  W.  M.  Clemens. 

(Clemens  Publishing  Co.,  San  Francisco.) 
Chance  Recollections  of  Mark  Twain.     By  M.  M.  Fairbanks. 

"  Chautauquan,"  January. 
Mark     Twain.    Interview     by     Luke    Sharp.     "  Idler," 

February. 
Mark    Twain.    By    J.    Stuart.       "  Literary    Opinion," 

July. 

1893.  Reporting    with    Mark    Twain.    By    Dan    de    Quille. 

"  Calif ornian  Illustrated  Magazine,"  July. 
S.  L.   Clemens  and    his  Recent   Works.    By   Frank  R. 

Stockton.     "  Forum,"  August. 
Stockton  on  Mark  Twain.     "  Critic,"  August  12. 
Mark  Twain  at  the  Lotos.     "  Critic,"  November  18. 


218  MARK  TWAIN 

1894.  Mark  Twain.     In   Liter  arische  Ansichten  in    Vortrdgen. 

By   Franz   Sintenis.     (E.    J.    Karow's    Universitats- 

buchhandlung :   Dorpat  =  Fellin.) 
Mark    Twain.    In    American    Writers    of    To-day.    By 

H.  C.JVedder.     (Silver  and  Burdett :  New  York.) 
Test  Readings  of  Mark  Twain's  Hands.     "  Borderland," 

January. 

Mark  Twain  as  a  Plagiarist.     "  Critic,"  March  31. 
Private    History    of    the    "Jumping   Frog"    Story.     By 

Mark  Twain.     "  North  American  Eeview,"  April. 
Keview  of  Tom  Sawyer  Abroad.     "  Saturday  Review," 

May  19. 

1895.  Of  Mark  Twain's  Best  Story.     In  Books  and  Play-Books. 

By  Brander  Matthews.     (Osgood,  Mcllvaine  and  Co.  : 

London.) 
Mark    Twain's    Character   by   Palmistry   and   Otherwise. 

"  Borderland,"  January. 
Samuel   L.    Clemens   on   Paul   Bourget's   "  Outre   Mer." 

Reply  to  Mark  Twain.     By  Max  O'Rell  (Paul  Blouet). 

"  North  American  Review,"  March. 
Review  of  Pudd'nhead  Wilson.     "  Critic,"  May  11. 
Mark  Twain  as  a  Critic.     By  D.  F.  Hannigan.     "  Free 

Review,"  October. 

1896.  Mark  Twain  as  an  Historical  Novelist.     By  W.  P.  Trent. 

"  Bookman  "  (N.Y.),  May. 
Review  of  Mark  Twain's  humoristische  Schriften.  "  Beilage 

z.  Allgemeinen  Zeitung,"  May  6. 
Mark    Twain.     By    Joseph    H.     Twichell.     "  Harper's 

Magazine,"  May. 

Portraits  of  Mark  Twain.     "  McClure's  Magazine,"  June. 
Mark  Twain  Up-to-date.     "  Idler,"  July. 

1897.  Mark  Twain.     In  Warner's  Library  of  the  World's  Best 

Literature,  vol.   vii.     (R.   S.   Peale   and   J.   A.   Hill : 
New  York.) 


APPENDIX  219 

Mark   Twain   and   his    Work.    By   Brander   Matthews. 

"  Book-Buyer,"  January. 
\  Mark  Twain  as  an  Interpreter  of  American  Character. 

By    Charles    M.    Thompson.     "Atlantic    Monthly," 

April. 

Mark  Twain,  Benefactor.     "  Academy,"  June  26. 
Mark  Twain.    A   Character  Sketch.    By  W.   T.   Stead. 

"  Keview  of  Eeviews  "  (London),  August.  Same  article : 

"  Keview  of  Reviews"  (Australasian  edition),  September. 
^Mark  Twain's  Place  in  Literature.     By  David  Masters. 

"  Chautauquan,"  September. 
Mark  Twain.    In  My  Contemporaries  in  Fiction.    By 

D.  C.  Murray.     "  Canadian  Magazine,"  October. 
Mark  Twain  in  Germany.     "  Critic,"  November  20. 
Die   Humoristen.     In   Geschichte  der  nordamerikanischen 

Litteratur.     By  E.  Engel.     (J.  Baedeker :    Leipzig.) 
Review  of  Mark  Twain's  humoristische  Schriften.    "  Illus- 

trirte  Zeitung,"  Nr.  2843, 

1898.  Mark  Twain.     By  Robert  Barr.     "  McClure's  Magazine," 

January  ;    "  Idler,"  February  (same  article). 
"The    Book    of    the    Month"    More    Tramps    Abroad. 

"  Review  of  Reviews  "  (London),  January. 
Review  of  More  Tramps  Abroad.     "  Lettres  Anglaises  " 

in  "  Mercure  de  France,"  February. 
Mark  Twain  as  Prospective  Classic.     By  Theodore  de 

Laguna.     "  Overland  Monthly,"  April. 
The  Real  Mark  Twain.    By  Carlyle  Smith.     "  Pall  Mall 

Magazine,"  September. 
Mark  Twain  in  California.    By  Noah  Brooks.    "  Century," 

November. 
Psychophysik     des     Humors.       By     K.     L.     Schleich. 

"  Zukunft,"  vol.  xxv.,  ss.  374-393. 
Mark  Twain.     By  "  S.  T."     "  Monatsblatter  fur  deutsche 

Litteratur,"  third  year,  ss.  33-35. 


220  MARK  TWAIN 

1899.  Mark   Twain.     A   Biographical   Criticism.     By   Brander 

Matthews.      In    vol.    i.,    collected    edition    of    Mark 

Twain's  works  (Harper  and  Bros. :  New  York.     Chatto 

and  Windus:   London).    Keprinted  in  Inquiries  and 

Opinions,  by  B.  Matthews.      (Chas.  Scribner's  Sons: 

New  York,  1907.) 
Mark  Twain's  Pets.    By  Edwin  Wildman.    "  St  Nicholas," 

January. 
Mark   Twain's  First  Book.    By  Luther  F.  Livingstone. 

"  Bookman  "  (N.Y.),  February. 
Mark  Twain  in  Deutschland.    By  Carl  von  Thaler.     "  Die 

Gegenwart,"  June  17. 
^American  Humour  :  Mark  Twain.     By  Anna  E.  Keeling. 

"  London  Quarterly  Review,"  July. 
Mark    Twain.     By    Samuel    E.    Moffett.     "  McClure's 

Magazine,"  October.     Also  published  in  The  $30,000 

Bequest  and  Other  Stories,  by  Mark  Twain. 
Eeply  to  Mark  Twain  on  the  Jews.     By  M.   S.   Levy. 

"  Overland  Monthly,"  October. 

My    Dlbut    as    a    Literary    Person.     By    Mark    Twain. 
\       "  Century,"  November. 
Review  of  Mark  Twain's  Complete  Works  (Chatto  and 

Windus).       "  Lettres    Anglaises "    in    "  Mercure    de 

France,"  December. 
Familiar  Haunts  of  Mark  Twain.     By  E.   D.   Fiedler. 

"  Harper's  Weekly,"  December  16. 
An  Interview  with  Mark  Twain.     In  From  Sea  to  Sea, 

by  Rudyard  Kipling.     (Doubleday  and  McClure  Co. : 
New  York.) 
Introduction   to  Mark  Twain's  humoristische  Schriften. 

(Lutz:  Stuttgart.) 

1900.  Mark   Twain.     In   Eccentricities   of   Genius.     By   J.    B. 
Pond.     (Chatto  and  Windus  :   London.) 


APPENDIX 

Introduction    to    Contes   Choisis    de   Mark    Twain.     By 

Gabriel  de  Lautrec.     (Mercure  de  France  :   Paris.) 
One  of  Mark  Twain's  Heroes  (Captain  Josiah  Mitchell). 

By  B.  F.  Hawley.     "  Century,"  May. 
My  Favorite  Novelist  and  His  Best  Book.     By  Sir  W. 

Besant.     "  Munsey's  Magazine,"  June. 
Mark  Twain  on  the  Lecture  Platform.     By  W.  M.  Clemens. 

"  Ainslee's  Magazine,"  August. 
Mark  Twain.    By  J.  E.  Hodder- Williams.     "  Bookman  " 

(London),  September. 
Review  of  Contes  Choisis  de  Mark  Twain.     (Translated  by 

Gabriel  de  Lautrec.)   "  Mercure  de  France,"  September. 
God    Speed  Mark  Twain.      By    P.   Bigelow.      "  Inde 
pendent,"  October  25. 
Reviews     of     The     Man     that     Corrupted     Hadleyburg. 

"Harper's    Weekly,"    August    25;      "Athenaeum," 

September  29 ;  "  Critic"  (William  Archer),  November  ; 

"  Blackwood's   Magazine,"   November ;    same   article 

"  Living  Age,"  December  15. 
Mark    Twain,    American    Citizen.       "  Nation "    (N.Y.), 

November  29. 
Twain's  Trip  around  the  World.     "  Current  Literature," 

December. 
Surprise  Party  to  Twain.     By  WT.  D.  Howells.     "  Harper's 

Weekly,"  December  15. 
Twain     and     his     Characters.       "  Harper's     Weekly," 

December  15. 
Mark  Twain.    Being  a  review  of  his  Ausgewahlte  humorist. 

Schriften  (Lutz  :    Stuttgart).     By  "  D."     "  Alte  und 

Neue  Welt,"  vol.  xxxiv.,  s.  700. 

1901.  Mark  Twain  as  an  Educator.    By  C.  J.  France.     "  Educa 
tion,"  January. 

Mark    Twain.    A    Biographical    Sketch.     "  Review    of 
Reviews  "  (N.Y.),  January. 


MARK  TWAIN 

..      .Jllark   Twain   a   Humorist   only.     "Bookman"    (N.Y.), 

January. 
Mark  Twain  :  an  Inquiry.     By  W.  D.  Howells.     "  North 

American  Review,"  February.     Reproduced  in  same 

magazine,  June,  1910. 
Mark  Twain  more  than  Humorist.     By  R.  E.  Phillips 

"  Book-Buyer,"  April. 
Mark    Twain's    Lecturing    Experience.     "  Book-Buyer," 

April. 
Twain  as  an  Inventor.     By  F.   E.   Leupp.     "Harper's 

Weekly,"  September  7. 
A   Retrospect  of  American  Humor.     By   W.   P.    Trent. 

"  Century,"  November. 
Mark  Twain.    A  Biographical  Sketch.     By  W.  Ramsay. 

"  Great  Thoughts,"  December. 
Reviews  of  The  Adventures  of  Tom  Sawyer.    In  gekiirzter 

Fassg.  (W.  G.  Kriiger,  Leipzig  :  Freytag,  1900)  :— 

(a)  by  H.  Heim.     "  Mitteilungen  a.  d.  gesammten 
Gebiete  d.  engl.     Sprache  u.  Litteratur."     Beibl. 
z.  "  Anglia,"  ss.  28-31. 

(b)  by  J.  Ellinger.     Same  journal,  s.  148. 

(c)  by  Ph.  Wagner.     "  Englische  Studien,"  s.  164. 
Mark  Twain.     Biographical  Introduction  to  A   Tramp 

Abroad   (selected   chapters   for   use   in   the   schools), 
edited  by  Dr.  Max  Mann.     (Leipzig  :  Freytag,  1901.) 

1902.  Mark   Twain   and  the    "chat   noir"     By   R     Phillips 

"  Book-Buyer,"  June. 
A  Day  with  Mark  Twain.    By  W.  B.  Northrop.    "  Cassell's 

Magazine,"  July. 
Twain  unveils   a   Tablet  to  Eugene  Field.      "Harper's 

Weekly,"  July  15. 
The  Boyhood  Home  of  Mark   Twain.      By   Henry   M. 

Wharton.     "  Century,"  September. 
Obituaries  of  Twain.     "  Harper's  Weekly,"  November  29. 


APPENDIX 

W .  D.  Howells*  Appreciation  of  Mark  Twain.  "  Con 
necticut  Magazine,"  December. 

In  Honor  of  Mark  Twain ;  Poems.  "  Harper's  Weekly," 
December  13. 

Mark  Twain  and  Christian  Science.  "  Harper's  Weekly," 
December  27. 

Samuel  L.  Clemens  and  the  First  Nevada  Legislature. 
By  M.  L.  Luther.  "  Land  of  Sunshine,"  vol.  xv., 
p.  144. 

Review  of  M.  Twain :  A  Tramp  Abroad,  h.  v.  M.  Mann 
(Leipzig:  Freytag,  1901).  By  J.  Ellinger.  "  Mit- 
teilungen  a.  d.  gesamten  Gebiete  d.  engl.  Sprache 
u.  Litteratur,"  Beibl.  z.  "  Anglia/'  s.  149. 

1903.  Will   Christian  Science  Rule  the   World?    "  Review  of 

Reviews  "  (N.Y.),  January. 

Fiftieth  Birthday  of  Mark  Twain.     "  Critic,"  January. 
Mark  Twain  and  Christian  Science.     "  Harper's  Weekly," 

January  24. 

Caricature  of  Mark  Twain.     "  Bookman  "  (N.Y.),  July. 
Portrait  of  Mark  Twain,  from  the  miniature  of  Ugo  Catani. 

"  Studio,"  September  15. 
Mark  Twain  u.  d.  amerikanische  Humor.     By  B.  Diederich. 

"  Der  Tiirmer  "  (Stuttgart),  July,  ss.  434-445. 
Altertumliche  Sprache  in   d.   Roman :    The  Prince  and 

the  Pauper.     By  J.  Ellinger.     "  Beitrage  zur  neuer. 

Philologie  J.  Schipper  z.  19.  Juli  1902,"  ss.  88-107. 
Review  of  A  Tramp  Abroad,  h.  v.  M.  Mann  (Leipzig  : 

Freytag,      1900).      By     Wilhelm     Swoboda.      "Die 

neueren  Sprachen,"  July,  ss.  223-225. 

1904.  Mark     Twain.      By    T.     M.    Parrott.       "  Booklover's 

Magazine,"  February. 

Interview  with  Mark  Twain.     By  J.  Mc Arthur.     "  Harper's 
Weekly,"  May  14. 


MARK  TWAIN 

Marie  Twain  from  an  Italian  Point  of  View.     By  Raffaele 
Simboli.     "  Critic,"  June. 

Extracts  from  Adam's  Diary.     "  Spectator,"  June  11. 
A    Glance   at    Twain's   Spoken   and    Written   Art.      By 

K.  W.  Gilder.     "  Outlook,"  December  3. 
"  Mark  Twain"    Samuel  L.  Clemens.     By  W.  L.  Alden. 

"  English  Illustrated  Magazine,"  November. 
Mark  Twain  als  Mensch  u.  Humorist.     By  A.    Wurm. 

"  Alte  und  neue  Welt"  (Einsiedeln),  s.  718. 

1905.  Mark     Twain's    Autobiography,     1872.       "Connecticut 

Magazine,"  April. 
Mark    Twain    at    Seventy.     "  Outlook,"    December    2 ; 

"  Nation,"  December  14. 
Seventieth  Birthday  Dinner  to  Mark  Twain.     "  Harper's 

Weekly,"  December  23. 
Mark    Twain    u.    d.    amerik.    Humor.       "  Beilage    zur 

Allgemeinen  Zeitung  "  (Miinchen).    Nr.  77. 
Mark    Twain   (zu  seinem  siebzigsten    Geburtstage],    with 

portrait.     By  Ludwig  Salomon.     "  Illustrirte  Zeitung." 

(Leipzig),  November  30. 
Mark  Twain.     By  B.  Diederich.     "  Tagl.     Eundschau  " 

(Leipzig),  Nr.  280. 
Mark  Twain  (zum  siebzigsten  Geburtstag}.     By  L.  Kellner. 

"Neue  Freie   Presse "  (Literaturblatt),  December  3, 

ss.  31-32. 
Review  of  A  Tramp  Abroad,  h.  v.  M.  Mann  (Leipzig  : 

Freytag,     1901).      By    Huendgren.      "Gymnasium" 

(Paderborn),  s.  49. 

1906.  The  Story  of  Mark   Twain's  Debts.     By   Frederick   A. 

King.       "  Bookman "     (N.Y.),     January.       Virtually 
same  article  in  same  magazine,  June,  1910. 


APPENDIX 

When    Mark    Twain    Lectured.      By    W.     H.     Merrill. 

"  Harper's  Weekly,"  February  10. 
Mark  Twain.     Neues  v.  Alt.     By  B.  Diederich.     "Der 

Tiirmer,"  May,  ss.  173-178, 
Mark  Twain's  Life  of  Samuel  L.   Clemens.     "  Current 

Literature,"  October. 
Chapters    from    My    Autobiography.     By    Mark    Twain. 

"North    American    Eeview."     Begun    September    7, 

1906,  and  ended  December,  1907. 

1907.  Samuel    L.    Clemens.    By    H.    M.    Bland.     "  Overland 

Monthly,"  January. 
Samuel     L.      Clemens.    By      S.  '   Gould.     "  Broadway 

Magazine,"  February. 
Samuel    L.     Clemens.     By    Andrew    Lang.      "  Albany 

Eeview,"  April. 
Mark  Twain,    Mrs   Eddy   and    Christian    Science.      By 

E.  A.  Kimball.     "  Cosmopolitan,"  May. 
'Mark   Twain.     By   W.    L.    Phelps.     "  North   American 

Review,"    July  5.     Same  article  in  Essays  on  Modern 

Novelists,   by  W.   L.   Phelps.      (The  Macmillan  Co., 

1910.) 
Samuel  L.  Clemens.     "  Spectator,"  May  25  ;  same  article, 

"  Living  Age,"  July  6. 
S.  L.  Clemens  in  England.    By  Sydney  Brooks.    "  Harper's 

Weekly,"  July  20. 
England's  Ovation  to  Mark  Twain.     By  Sydney  Brooks. 

"  Harper's  Weekly,"  July  27. 
Mark  Twain,  Doctor  of  Letters.     By  Samuel  E.  Moffett. 

"  Eeview  of  Reviews  "  (N.Y.),  August. 
Mark  Twain,  the  Humorist.     By  Hamilton  W.   Mabie. 

"  Outlook,"  November  23. 
Review  of  The   $30,000  Bequest  and  other  Stories.     By 

E.    Teichmann.      "  Neue    Philologische    Rundschau," 

s.  593. 


MARK  TWAIN 

The  Savage  Club.  By  Aaron  Watson.  T.  Fisher  Unwin, 
London.  Chapters :  Artemus  Ward  and  Mark  Twain, 
and  Mark  Twain's  Own  Account',  pp.  119-135. 
IQOS.^Mark  Twain.  In  The  New  American  Type,  and  other 
Essays.  By  Henry  D.  Sedgwick.  (Houghton, 
Mifflin  and  Co.  :  Boston.) 

Life  of  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich.  By  Ferris  Greenslet. 
(Hough ton,  Mifflin  and  Co.  :  Boston.) 

A  Senator  of  the  Sixties.  By  W.  M.  Stewart.  (Neale 
Publishing  Co.  :  Richmond.)  Compare  also  "  Saturday 
Evening  Post,"  February  15. 

American  Literature.  By  Charles  Whibley.  "  Black- 
wood's  Magazine,"  March. 

Mark  Twain's  New  Home  at  Redding,  Conn.     By  A.  B. 

Paine.     "  Harper's  Weekly,"  July  4. 
^American  Humor.     By  Brander  Matthews.     "  Saturday 
Evening  Post,"  November  21. 

Life  of  Bret  Harte.  By  T.  Edgar  Pemberton.  (C.  Arthur 
Pearson  :  London.) 

1909.  Sixty  Years  in  the  Wilderness.     By  Sir  H.  Lucy.     Chapter 

(pp.  220-229)  on  Mark  Twain.     (E.  P.  Button  and  Co.  : 

New  York.) 
Mark    Twain's    House   at   Redding,    Conn.     "  American 

Architect  and  Building  News  "  (N.Y.),  February  10. 
"'Stormfield"   Mark  Twain's  New   Country  Home.     By 

A.  R.  Dugmore.     "  Country  Life  in  America,"  April. 
Mark  Twain.     His   Unique  Position  in  the  Republic  of 

Letters.      By      Archibald      Henderson.       "Harper's 

Magazine,"  May. 
Mark  Twain  at  Stormfield.     By  A.  B.  Paine.     "  Harper's 

Magazine,"  May. 
The  Real  Mark  Twain.     The  Man  and  his  Work.    By 

Archibald        Henderson.        "  Charlotte        Observer," 

Sunday,  May  16. 


APPENDIX 

Is  Mark  Twain  Dead  ?    Comment.     "  Bookman  "  (N.Y.), 

June. 
A  Shakespeare  Puzzle.     Being  an  analysis  of  Is  Shakespeare 

Dead  ?    Editor's  Study.     "  Harper's  Magazine,"  July. 
Marie    Twain.      By    Jacques    Lux.      "  L'lndependence 

Beige,"  July  16. 
Mark  Twain  from  a  New  Angle.     "  Current  Literature," 

August. 
Is   Mark    Twain   Dead?    By   E.    H.    Angert.     "North 

American  Review,"  September. 
Mark  Twain — wie  er  ist.     Eine  Skizze  nock  dem  Leben. 

By     Archibald     Henderson.       "  Deutsche     Revue," 

November. 
Mark   Twain   Library   Benefit.     "  Putnam's   Magazine," 

December. 
Mark  Twain  on  Christian  Science.    By  M.  Fischer.    "  Die 

neueren  Sprachen,"  ss.  206-228. 

1910.  Mark  Twain  Number  of   "The  Book  News   Monthly" 

(Philadelphia),  April,  containing  the  following  papers : — 

Mark  Twain.     Personal  Impressions.     By  Henry  M. 

Alden. 

Mark  Twain  the  Humorist.     By  Clarence  H.  Gaines. 
S.  L.  Clemens.     "  New  York  Observer,"  April  28. 
Mark  Twain  and  His  Works.     "  Independent,"  April  28. 
Mark  Twain.     By  G.  K.  Chesterton.     "  T.  P.'s  Weekly," 

April  29. 

Mark  Twain  as  an  Author.     "  Outlook  "  (N.Y.),  April  30'. 
Mark    Twain.     A    Biographical    Summary.     By    A.    B. 

Paine.     "  Harper's  Weekly,"  April  30. 
One    of    Mark    Twain's    "  Innocents    Abroad."     "  New 
York  Times,"  May  1. 


228  MARK  TWAIN 

Notes  on  Mark  Twain.    By  W.  L.  Phelps.    "Independent," 
May  5. 

Twainiana.     Compiled    by    A.     M.     Stoddart.     "  Inde 
pendent,"  May  5. 

Mark  Twain,  Intime.     "  Le  Figaro  "  (Paris),  May  7. 
The  Last  Day  at  Stormfield.     Poem  by  Bliss  Carman. 

"  Collier's  Weekly,"  May  7. 
Samuel   Langhorne   Clemens.     Poem   by  W.  D.  Nesbit. 

"Harper's  Weekly,"  May  7. 
To  Mark  Twain.     Poem  by  S.  F.  Murray.     "Harper's 

Weekly,"  May  7. 
Mark  Twain's  Religious  Book.     Being  a  review  of  What 

is  Man  ?     "  Literary  Digest,"  May  7. 
Mark  Twain.     By  S.  P.  Sherman.     "  Nation,"  May  12. 
Painting  the  Portrait  of  Mark  Twain.     By  S.  J.  Woolf, 

"  CoUier's  Weekly,"  May  14. 
Mark  Twain.     Poem  by  J.  W.  Thompson.     "Harper's 

Weekly,"  May  14. 

Mark  Twain  Number  of  the  "  Bookman  "  (N.Y.),  June, 
containing  the  following  papers  : — 
Mark  Twain — An  Appreciation.    By  Henry  M.  Alden. 
Mark  Twain  in  San  Francisco.     By  Bailey  Millard. 
Best  Sellers  of  Yesterday.     "  The  Innocents  Abroad." 

By  Arthur  B.  Maurice. 

Mark  Twain  in  Clubland.     By  William  H.  Rideing. 
Mark  Twain  a  Century  Hence.     By  H.  T.  Peck. 
The  Story  of  Mark  Twain's  Debts.     By  Frederick  A. 

King. 

Mark  Twain  Number  of  the  "  Bookman  "  (London),  June, 
containing  the  following  papers  : — 
The  Humor  of  Mark  Twain.     By  Barry  Pain. 
Mark  Twain,  the  Man  and  the  Jester.     By  Walter 
Jerrold. 


APPENDIX  229 

Personal  Recollections  and  Opinions  of  Mark  Twain. 
By  Jerome  K.  Jerome,  E.  V.  Lucas,  Walter 
Emanuel,  J.  J.  Bell,  Leonard  Henslowe,  Arnold 
Bennett,  Owen  Seaman,  W.  Pett  Eidge,  and 
F.  Anstey. 
Mark  Twain's  Pessimistic  Philosophy.  "  Current 

Literature,"  June. 
Mark  Twain  as  a  Serious  Force  in  Literature.     "  Current 

Literature,"  June. 
Mark  Twain  and  the  Old  Time  Subscription  Book.     By 

G.  Ade.     "  Eeview  of  Eeviews  "  (N.Y.),  June. 
Mark    Twain,    Artist.     By    W.    L.    Phelps.      "Eeview 

of  Eeviews  "  (N.Y.),  June. 
Mark  Twain  as  a  Neighbor.     By  D.  Beard.     "  Eeview 

of  Eeviews  "  (N.Y.),  June. 
England  and  Mark  Twain.     By  "  Britannicus."     "  North 

American  Eeview,"  June. 

Tributes  to  Mark  Twain.     By  Andrew  Carnegie,  A.  B. 
Paine,    Booker    T.    Washington,    Booth    Tarkington, 
Samuel  Gompers,    Wilbur    D.    Nesbit,    George    Ade, 
Hamlin    Garland,    John    Kendrick    Bangs,    Brander 
Matthews.     "  North  American  Eeview/'  June. 
A  Great  Career.     "  Chautauqua  Magazine/'  June. 
Serious  Humorists.     "  Nation  "  (N.Y.),  June  30. 
Mark     Twain     as     an    Orator.      By    "  Charles    Vale." 

"  Forum,"  July. 

A  Great  Individual.     "  American  Monthly/'  July. 
Mark  Twain :  an  intimate  Memory.    By  Henry  Watterson. 

"American  Magazine/'  July. 
Mark  Twain:  a  Poem.     By  Caroline  Stern.     "Harper's 

Weekly/'  July  2. 

My  Memories  of  Mark   Twain.     By   W.   D.   Howells. 
"  Harper's  Magazine,"  July,  August,  and  September. 


230  MARK  TWAIN 

My  Mark  Twain.     By  W.  D.  Howells.    Harper  &  Bros. : 

New  York  and  London. 
* 

NOTE.— This  bibliography  of  more  than  two  hundred  and 
thirty  titles,  although  it  has  been  compiled  with  care  and  after 
considerable  research,  is  of  necessity  incomplete.  There  remain 
numerous  articles,  essays,  and  "  interviews,"  scattered  about,  in 
newspapers  and  magazines,  all  over  the  world.  These  articles 
are  not  indexed  and  consequently  are  difficult  to  trace ;  yet,  in 
many  cases,  they  contain  valuable  biographical  data  for  the  life 
of  Mark  Twain.  The  author  of  the  present  work  will  sincerely 
appreciate  any  aid  given  him  in  the  effort  to  perfect  the  present 
bibliography,  and  will  gratefully  acknowledge  all  articles  or 
titles  sent  to  him  through  his  publishers,  American  or  English. 
All  who  admire  and  love  the  works  of  Mark  Twain  may 
show  their  appreciation  by  adding  their  mite  to  the  present 
bibliography. 

*  The  International  Fame  of  Mark  Twain.     By  Archibald 
Henderson.     "  North  American  Review/'  December. 


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